Size Matters
We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, part of the geography of hope.
— Wallace Stegner
We ran into this landslide leaving Grizzly Creek:
When we had arrived a few days before, we were stopped on CA 36, and waited as a line of cars and trucks queued up behind us. When they finally paused construction to open up a lane, we were stuck behind a fully loaded logging truck driving slow. In retrospect, the Caltrans traffic control guy gesturing for me to go faster seemed just a bit too frantic, as I watched more rock’s from the slide skittle across the road.
CA 36 remains closed today.1
The resulting detour took us on Mr Toads Wild Ride over unpaved roads, across mountain-top vistas, through tiny towns and finally down a series of steep grades and switchbacks that follow the Eel river on it’s journey to the sea into Garberville. We drove through the heart of Humboldt county’s Emerald Triangle, where every road sign is riddled with bullet holes and decrepit barns neighbor cannabis grow ops surrounded by fences of barbed wire, bounded by shiny fields of solar panels.
Didn’t mind the detour, the views were epic.
I’ve always been a city boy, but now I live in the last urban outpost in California heading north on US 101 until you hit Oregon. One of the joys of this place is riding the country roads through the small towns, along the river and out to the coast.
Views of our planet, as far as you can see, are somehow, cathartic:
Last week, in search of more wilderness, we went to Kings Canyon National Park. Kings Canyon is southeast of us up in the Sierra Nevada mountains. You travel through the string of agriculture towns that dot CA 99 down California’s Central Valley. We turned left at Fresno. Once in the park, you still have to work to reach the Canyon—winding another hour deeper east into the Sierras.
Carved out by glaciers, Kings Canyon is deeper than the Grand Canyon, with steep drops down to the canyon floor and the Kings River. It’s over 8,000 feet from Spanish Mountain to the canyon bottom.
This might be Spanish Mountain:
The Grand Canyon is only 6,000 feet at its deepest. It’s undeniably bigger though; 10 times as long at 300 miles.
I bet you’ve seen a picture of the Grand Canyon, so instead, here’s a picture of the biggest Canyon on Earth (the Grand Canyon is #2): the Yarlung Tsangpo Canyon in Tibet:
From the top of Kings Canyon you can catch a glimpse of the Kings River sparkling far below—the faintest sliver of silver ribbon. We drove 3,000 feet down…down…down to reach the floor of the canyon from our campsite.
Stegner’s opening quote2 is posted at an overlook at the top. A few days up here, you feel neck and shoulders relax, and your heart open up.
The drive down was sketchier than the prior landslide and detour, with stretches of the road hugging granite overhangs on one side with steep canyon drops on the other:
We drove until CA 180 ended—Roads End, where the cars park and the wilderness hikers begin:
The views and the cold water make the drive worth it.3 This also might be Spanish Mountain:
You can’t drive across the Sierras here, but you can hike back up deeper into the wilderness. The Pacific Crest and John Muir Trail’s both traverse Kings Canyon. This picture is from a friend who hiked the PCT three years ago; Kearsarge pass is 30 miles and 9,000 feet above where we stopped, this is the High Sierra, well above the tree line:
10 years ago, R and I hiked a piece of this out of Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite, up to the Vogelsang High Sierra Camp at 10,000 feet:
We’re going back in the Fall.
Sequoia National Park neighbors Kings Canyon NP, and it’s named for the biggest tree in the world, not the deepest canyon. But, we almost didn’t see it.
See, the 2nd biggest tree in the world was just a short hike from our campsite. We paid General Grant a visit shortly after we made camp:
Biggest, not tallest4. The sign gave a bunch of cognitive anchors as reference. Like, hollowed out it would hold 40 million ping pong balls. I overheard this one from a dad reading the sign to his daughter while she stared up at it. Another family, lugging a stroller over the rocks, hopped the fence for a close up pic with the General.
Did we need to drive some more over to neighboring Sequoia NP to see the biggest tree in the world? Once we saw #2, of course we had to see #1, but first a stop at the biggest stump in the world:
This is the Mark Twain tree and it was cut down in 1891 to convince the world the mightiest trees on the planet did indeed live in California. Cross sections were shipped to the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Natural History Museum in London—where they are still on display today.
The Twain tree was born in 550 AD. It was over 1300 years old and it took a dozen men two weeks to cut it down.
Here’s the biggest tree in the world:
General Sherman grove was packed with people big and small that came from all around the world to see it. They all came to be inspired, and the biggest tree does not disappoint—craning your neck to see the top is as good as looking far out across the canyon.
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
— John Muir 5
A CalTrans worker died in that slide, squished like a bug by a tree falling down the mountain. Here’s the slide in action, captured by lunatic locals (warning: language).
From Stegners ‘Wilderness Letter’ to congress that led to the foundation of the US Wilderness Act.
Death by footnote #2 — Ranger Lisa was suspicious of my request to get to the river; turns out a hiker died last week, swept away in the Kings River. First death of the season. Death by wilderness spikes in the summer; stay tuned—might have to write about that deadpool.
The tallest tree in the world is a coastal redwood named Hyperion. Not a reference to Dan Simons book by the same name which features the spaceship Yggdrasill, modeled after a towering tree and named after the mythical Norse tree that connects everything in the Universe.
Eminently quotable: John Muir Quotes NPS
Nice road trip!