Shockingly High - Kings Canyon & Sequoia National Park – Part 2

June 28th - 30th, 2021

We’d spend our last 2 days exploring Sequoia National Park from a car camping exploratory base camp. We packed up our tent, cooler, dry goods, and expedition gear into Phoenix, and left Destiny to reach further into Sequoia than a day trip worth of driving would warrant.

The Lodgepole Campground is a nice, National Park run campground, and it would be our first experience in real “Bear Country”. Bear Aware protocol was drilled into us by the ranger at check in, and the whiteboard sign that read “Days since last bear encounter” had the number 4 was scrawled above the printed words. We’re not talking grizzlies yet, only California Black Bears, which by all accounts are harmless, until they get a taste for human food. Then they have to be destroyed, unfortunately, so all perfumed items, and all food, must be stored in the bear proof boxes provided by the campground.

Beyond a quick lesson on bear safety, we learned the following: we’re more efficient setting up Destiny than a traditional tent campsite at this point, and next time we are going to simply blow up an air mattress and throw it into the 8’ bed of Phoenix rather than fuss with a pup tent.

Once settled, we decided to go see the General Sherman tree, the largest living tree on earth by volume. There are taller Sequoia in the park, and older ones too, but the General Sherman is THICK. If memory serves, the info boards told me that there are 300’ tall Sequoia in the park, 3000 year old Sequoia, and the General Sherman is over 100’ in circumference at the base. From this busy, touristy localle, we looped out for 3 miles on the Congress Loop, thus named for two distinct stands of giant Sequoia known as The House and The Senate. Other trees of note included The President, and The Chief Sequoia. All are very impressive specimens, and John Muir is quoted as saying this grove of Sequoia were his favorite, and so he named it the Giant Forest. The openness of this forest, and the shockingly high canopy, surely impacted Muir’s impressions.

Plenty of daylight remained, so we returned to our temporary camp, made up some dinner, packed it with a couple beers, and headed for Moro Rock. This super impressive granite outcropping offers a half mile trail, out-and-back to the bald summit. The cliffs are a thousand feet down on three sides, but they do offer railings! We found a nice spot to settle and eat while the best sunset of the trip thus far unfolded in front of us. There were a few others up there enjoying the stunning beauty, but it was very peaceful. This experience wouldn’t have been possible without decoupling from the camper. We climbed the stairs down the big rock before total darkness set in. Somehow, climbing down is always less triggering of my fear of heights than climbing up, even when the drops are shockingly high. We were itching to do a big hike, and get up into the impressive high Sierra Nevada peaks that we’d thus far only seen from a distance. Tomorrow would be our chance.

We chose to hike up to Alta Peak, a towering 11,200’ above sea level, and a hike which would span over 15 miles, and climb over 4000’. We arrived at the parking lot still undecided, and hesitant, about our intended undertaking. The trail splits 2 miles in, and offers a much more moderate 8 mile loop at lower altitude out to some alpine lakes. We were going to see how we felt there, and then make a choice to push for Alta or not. While we prepped our hiking bags at the trailhead a young man pulled in next to us, and introduced himself. He saw our NH tags, and as a Bay Stater, felt inclined to say hello. Turns out he’s on a similar road trip, and lives only 15 minutes from us back home. He encouraged us to bag Alta, which likely tipped the scales in that direction, ultimately.

The opening 2 miles were a breeze. They climb slowly up a ridge, and cut across a lot of small springs, still running before the summer dries them out totally. This would provide fertile breeding ground for mosquitos, but we wouldn’t notice them until our walk out. Feeling confident, and now excited, we covered the next 3 miles through old growth forest before intersecting with another trail up on a larger ridge. Here we’d get our first views out over the 12,000’ peaks which include the Queen Kaweah range. The next 3 miles follow along this ridge, and up out of the deeper forest. There are sections that cross old avalanche slides, complete with evidence of their impressive and destructive power in the form of hundreds of stumps, their tree tops snapped clean off and dragged thousands of feet down into the valley. At one point, a steady rain fell from a passing cloud, so we huddled under a large pine, ate some fruit, and waited 10 minutes for it to pass. Soon after, we passed a large boulder that provides a large overhang, under which people had previously camped. This would have been a better spot to wait out the rain I mused. When we had distant views, we could see other small patches of rain moving through the high peaks.

We reached the 6 mile mark about 3 hours in, leaving only the hardest 1 mile stretch of the hike, gaining over 1000’ in the last mile, all over 10,000’ up in the thin air. The sky was overcast, which was helpful from a sun scarcity perspective, but not dark enough to concern us about further rain. We met the young man from Salisbury on his descent, he having outpaced us with his youth. He reiterated the same thing the previous couple of hikers did, “that last push is a b****, but it’s well worth it”. We leaned into our White Mountain training, and the trail conditions didn’t bother us. The altitude certainly made it slower going. But we pressed on, and 45 minutes later, I was sitting on top of the summit boulder.

Unfortunately, the atmospheric conditions were working against us. It was really very dark on the far side of Alta, and rain spots seemed to be growing in frequency in the closer valleys. I took a quick video (check it in the link below), and Kristin snapped one photo, then we heard thunder. No Bueno. It was coming from somewhere over in the darkness. Distances are very hard to judge up there, it could be 10 miles to the next peak, it could be 30, we had no idea. Then I started to feel the electricity.

I stood up cautiously, intimidated by the slope of the boulder to my right, and the precipitous cliff to my left. All the hair on my body stood up too, but not due to fear. A thunder head was forming, and I was now the tallest thing for a significant number of miles in all directions. Kristin saw a lighting flash in the distance out of her peripheral vision. I shuffled toward the edge of the boulder in the direction from which I had scrambled up. My feet were snapping with electricity. It sounded like I was grinding off tiny pebbles from the massive boulder. I looked down to see if that was the case, unable to believe it was electricity. No sign of sand falling from under my shoes. Then a static shock arced from my right elbow to my side body. The tiny cattle prod shifted internal gears. I was no longer concerned with tripping and falling, instead I bounded off the boulders, down 20 feet to the sandy summit. It was time to go. The thunder seemed to be constant at this point. We didn’t see lightening, but we didn’t stick around to look.

We wanted off that summit, as fast as possible. There is a strange breed of hiker in New Hampshire, one that sneaks up on you, and can startle you as they go running by. We don’t aspire to be trail runners, but on this day, we were obliged. So we jogged off the peak, not pausing to look back, concerned only with reaching the forest below. It would be 1.5 miles until we reached a stand of trees big enough that we felt good about the odds of not being under the tree that got struck, should lightening come. It had started to drizzle, and we’d now covered almost 9 miles without eating lunch.

We decided to huddle under two large trunks and munched on our wraps. Perhaps 5 minutes had passed at our temporary refuge, when I observed a flash of lightening, and counted off 9 full seconds. The boy scouts taught me that means the lightening is 3 miles away. My best guess was we had one more mile until we reached the boulder-cave, wherein we’d feel truly delivered. Quickly, we packed up and beat feet anew. Fortunately, our trail was taking us further from the thunderhead. The thunder grew less frequent, and far quieter. The rain fell more lightly. But we were still quite pleased to pull up under the cave and finish our lunches. We had 5 miles left to cover, but all on gradual, earthen trail. We savored some peanut M&Ms and pulled our packs back onto our backs before retracing our steps to the truck.

Besides the annoyance of mosquitoes for about a half hour of the final few miles, it was a pleasant walk down. Our heartrates had resumed a normal pace, the rain had moved on, the electric storm either dissipated, or was redirected by the peaks. Not 200 yards from the car we met a young male Mule deer. His felt covered antlers stood proudly over his head as he peered upon us. We spoke to him softly, letting him know we meant no harm. He wasn’t shocked at our presence. We were happy to be back at Phoenix, also not shocked.

We drove down out of the park to “home”, almost a full 11,000’ lower in altitude than we’d been only a few hours before. We felt good to be back in the Apollo, and fulfilled after an adventurous lunar landing. We’d be moving on to Yosemite shortly. We will savor the coming lay day, do our chores, clear our emails, and remain excited for the road ahead. 

For more pictures of our time in Sequoia National Park, click here.