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After a sleepless night, we headed up through the foothills on a treacherously windy mountain road into the Giant Forest. Here, we came across the world's largest tree: General Sherman is about 275 feet tall (equivalent to a 27-storey building!), 36,5 feet wide and about 2000 years old. In theory, there is enough wood in this tree to build 25x2-bed houses (if the wood were good enough to build with). However, it is a very brittle and soft wood. It holds the heavy-weight title for being the largest tree by volume as well as the largest single living organism on planet earth. In addition, it continues to grow by 40-50 cubic feet of wood growth each year!
FYI, the largest (sequoia), tallest (coastal redwood) and oldest (Briscoe pine) trees are ALL Californian natives! Sequoia, however, tend to prefer the cooler weather of the western Sierra Nevada range. They grow at 5-7000feet - which is the optimum level for snow run-off and water-pooling. The roots only go down 3-5feet and grow horizontally up to 150feet because they are slowly soaking up moisture. The bitter tannic acid gives the bark it's distinctive reddish-brown colour and helps it repel insects and fungi and makes it highly fire resistant. Sequoias tend to die off at the top to preserve its energy. The no. 1 thing that kills them is falling over due to erosion as their root systems are shallow.
Our ranger, Spencer Cole, took us on a fascinating free guided walk through the woods. He asked us the question, "Why do we care about these trees?". Well, they are very old, rare and huge organisms. The colour, bark and size help us identify a tree as a giant sequoia but the young ones don't look like the mature ones - they have segmented leaves. Walter Fry, a logger who came here in the 1860's, was so impressed with the sequoias that he changed his career and became an advocate for the trees and trying to preserve them!
At the foot of Bear Hill, Spencer explained that in the early days of the park, the rangers used to feed the bears every afternoon for the tourists! They quickly found out that bears are very intelligent and have very quick learned behaviour and associative behaviour and finally stopped this practice. Currently, the park is actively discouraging bear and human contact and even has a team of people that go around scaring bears from areas that humans frequent! As if on cue, a bear came running from the road. A bus was hooting at it and it got scared - then, when it saw our large group it started running towards the hill and Spencer started chasing it! We has quite a bit of excitement as Spencer was contacting the "bear brigade" and trying to keep a hiking family from walking into the frightened bear's path above. All in a day's work for a ranger!
Anyways, back to the trees. The bark of the tree is very fibrous, spongey and soft - adapted so that the tree can last long in this area. Sometimes the bark in the tree can grow to 3feet in depth! The bark grows deep and can heal itself very well. Also, tannin is a very good preservative which helps the tree survive for so many years. At the age of 100 years it can start producing cones which stay in the tree for a log time until the right time for them to fall and seed. Forest fires produce the ideal conditions - a clean slate as the undergrowth is burnt and for the cones to fall and seed. Every cone has about 200 seeds (each the size of an oatmeal) and there is only a 1 in 1million chance that a seed will germinate and then, only 1 in 10million sequoias survive to adulthood! Another defensive mechanism - it will start growing around burrowing insects and create a burl. At about 600years of age, they start bulking up and becoming more fire-resistant.
It was time for us to head toward King's Canyon and our campsite for the night. I asked Wendy to drive as I was knackered from lack of sleep but the road was really windy and I felt horribly carsick. The facilities weren't as extensive as Sequoia NP, but it wasn't as busy there when we arrived and the setting amongst the giant trees was beautiful.
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