Kings Canyon: General Grant and a canyon deeper than the Grand Canyon

Kings Canyon is the neighbour of Sequoia: same ticket, same road, same administration. The park is visited in two stages. First Grant Grove, an easily reached grove of giant sequoias, open all year. Then the canyon itself, an hour’s drive further on: a granite valley carved by glaciers, far less well known than Yosemite and almost empty.

History and origins

Grant Grove was protected as early as 1890, a week after Sequoia, under the name General Grant National Park. The aim at the time was to save the sequoias from the loggers, who had already cleared the neighbouring groves.

The canyon had to wait until 1940. That year, Congress created Kings Canyon National Park, which absorbed the small earlier park. Since 1943, Sequoia and Kings Canyon have been managed together.

The canyon was cut by the Kings River, then widened by glaciers. Just outside the park, it reaches 2,500 metres between the river and the neighbouring summit. That’s deeper than the Grand Canyon, even though you never see it in a single glance.

What to do there

• General Grant 📷The General Grant sequoia under a blue sky: the second-biggest tree in the world, after General Sherman. It stands nearly 82 metres tall and measures almost 33 metres around the base. A paved 800-metre loop passes at its foot.
• The Fallen Monarch 📷The hollow interior of the Fallen Monarch with light at the far end: on the same loop, a sequoia that fell centuries ago, so big and so hollow that you can walk through it upright, which we did 📷The Fallen Monarch, a fallen sequoia, and a standing giant sequoia at Grant Grove. It served as a shelter, an inn and even a stable for the cavalry in the 19th century.
• Panoramic Point: at the end of a narrow little road, a short trail leads to a view of the peaks of the Sierra Nevada 📷View of the Kings Canyon mountains above the fir trees at the end of the day. That’s where we ended our day. The road is closed to motorhomes and shut in winter.
• Big Stump: just after the park entrance, a loop among enormous stumps, the remains of the sequoias felled in the 1880s. It gives you a measure of what was lost.
• The Kings Canyon Scenic Byway: Highway 180 drops from Grant Grove to the canyon floor over 48 km. Allow an hour without stopping. It follows the river, passes the foot of Grizzly Falls, a waterfall a stone’s throw from the car park, and comes to a dead end at Road’s End.
• Roaring River Falls: a powerful waterfall between two granite walls, five minutes from the car park on a paved path.
• Zumwalt Meadow: a riverside meadow surrounded by cliffs. It’s the best-known walk on the canyon floor. A flood swept away part of the boardwalk in 2019: the trail no longer goes all the way round the meadow and is walked there and back.
• Mist Falls: the big day hike, starting from Road’s End, to one of the most beautiful waterfalls in the park.
• Hume Lake: a mountain lake 20 minutes from Grant Grove, just outside the park, with a beach, a shop and fuel.
• Redwood Canyon: one of the largest sequoia groves in the world, at the end of a dirt track. Much of it burned in 2021 and only some of the trails are maintained.

Stories and good to know

• General Grant has been “the Nation’s Christmas Tree” since 1926, by decision of President Coolidge. A ceremony is held at its foot every December.
• In 1956, President Eisenhower also made it a national memorial to the soldiers who died for the country. It’s the only living monument of its kind in the United States.
• A sequoia’s roots are surprisingly shallow: barely a few metres deep 📷The roots of a fallen sequoia at Grant Grove. They do, however, spread a very long way around the trunk.
• Between Grant Grove and the canyon floor, the road leaves the park and crosses a national forest. That’s where you’ll find Hume Lake and Boyden Cavern, a cave visited with a guide.
• On the canyon floor, the river is cold and very fast in spring. The park asks people not to swim in it at that time of year.

Practical information for your road trip

• Pass: we got in with our America the Beautiful pass, which covers Sequoia and Kings Canyon. Everything is explained in our guide to the national parks pass.
• Getting there: Grant Grove is about an hour from the Giant Forest in Sequoia via the Generals Highway, and 1 hr 15 from Fresno via the Big Stump entrance. Heading north, allow 2 hrs 30 to Oakhurst, on the doorstep of Yosemite.
• Large vehicles: the Big Stump entrance, on Highway 180, is the easiest for a motorhome. It avoids the hairpin bends of Sequoia’s south entrance.
• Fuel: there’s no petrol station in the park. The nearest is at Hume Lake. Fill up before you drive up.
• Bears: store all food in the metal lockers in the car parks, especially at Cedar Grove, where bears are very much around.
• Where to stay: at Grant Grove, John Muir Lodge and the Grant Grove Cabins. On the canyon floor, Cedar Grove Lodge, small and open from May to mid-October. Otherwise in Fresno or Visalia.
• Combine it with: Sequoia on the same day, then Yosemite, as we did on our road trip 1.

Our experience in Kings Canyon

We passed through at the end of the day in May 2024, after Sequoia. We only saw Grant Grove and Panoramic Point, before getting back on the road to Oakhurst and Yosemite.

⏳ Our day-by-day journals are coming soon.