Scout hike in Giant Forest

I've only been there once, but I love that place. I couldn't imagine being able to go there for a day hike, I hate you :D.

For all the East Coast people that have never been, I highly recommend it. You can fly in\out of Reno pretty cheap and hit Sequoia, Yosemite, and Lake Tahoe all in one trip.
 
PorcupineMtns66 said:
Had to look at this to remember what earth looks like without snow.....i'm ready for spring!
Click to expand...

But do you know what Giant Forest looks like this time of the year? I happen to really like it with snow!
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Incredible photos!
What kind of camera did you use to take these?
 
Some were with an Olympus SP-350 (most of my backpacking pics have been with that one) and some with a Kodak Z1285. In this case, the scout hike was with the Kodak, and the snow pics were with the Olympus.
 
I've been lucky enough to see some red woods, massive in person, the scale is just tremendous.
 
For an easterner who cannot even imagine a tree this big, tell us where would be the best place to experience this! This is one the the top items on my Before I die list!
 
DavidZ - It depends what you are looking for. These are giant sequoia, which are found in scattered groves on the west slope of the Sierras, from about 3600-8900' elevation. I have been in many of the groves, from Calaveras Big Trees (one of the northernmost groves) through Yosemite and Sequoia/Kings Canyon. By far the best examples of giant sequoias are found in Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park. If you don't have time for extensive hiking, Giant Forest and Redwood Mountain grove are really good options.

If you want taller trees, you need to go to the coast to see the coast redwoods (a different species). Giant sequoias will grow up to 40' diameter and 321' height (typically 25-30' diameter and 275' height for a mature tree); coast redwoods will get up to 379' height, but are typically 20' diameter for a mature tree. There are a number of good places to see large coast redwoods - Redwood National Park in northern California, Prairie Creek Redwoods state park (where Return of the Jedi forest scenes were filmed), and Big Basin Redwoods state park near Santa Cruz.
 
The oldest known sequoia was ring-counted to be 3266 years. The oldest coast redwood was counted at about 2200 years.

Of course, this is young compared to bristlecone pines. The current oldest known living bristlecone is the Methuselah tree on White Mountain, at 4842 years right now. And another older one was found on Wheeler Peak, NV, but the ignorant researcher who was racing to find the oldest trees decided that the contorted trunk was too hard to do a standard core sample for ring count, so he got permission to cut it down. They counted 4844 rings, and the center of the original trunk was gone (after four milennia of windblown sand and ice eroded one side of the trunk). It is estimated that it was actually about 4950 years old when it was cut down in the 1960s.

The largest sequoias (like the Sherman tree) are generally around 2000-2400 years old. It is humbling to walk among trees that have stood for that long. And I have been in a couple bristlecone groves, and it is even more humbling to walk among trees that were alive at the time of Moses and the Pharoahs.

Sequoias are actually fast growing, at 400 years they are already pushing 300' tall. After that they tend to gain girth rather than height (virtually all of the older trees don't get any taller because lightning strikes have killed the crown).
 
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