Sequoia: at the foot of the biggest trees in the world

At Sequoia you come to see trees, and you leave finding it hard to believe. Giant sequoias aren’t the tallest trees in the world, but they are the biggest: trunks as wide as a house, two or three thousand years old. The park is perched at 2,000 metres in the Sierra Nevada, at the end of a long, winding road. It adjoins its neighbour, Kings Canyon, and the two are visited on the same ticket.

History and origins

Giant sequoias grow wild in only one place in the world: the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, between 1,500 and 2,500 metres. They shouldn’t be confused with the redwoods of the Californian coast, which are taller but much slimmer.

By the 1880s, loggers had already felled many of these trees. Yet their wood shatters as it falls and is worth almost nothing. To save what was left, the park was created in 1890. It’s the country’s second national park after Yellowstone, a few days ahead of Yosemite.

What to do there

• General Sherman 📷The General Sherman sequoia behind its wooden fence: the biggest living tree in the world, with nearly 1,500 m³ of wood. It stands 84 metres tall, measures more than 30 metres around the base, and is thought to be over 2,000 years old. A paved path leads down to it from the car park. Look at the people at its foot: it’s the only way to grasp the scale.
• The Congress Trail 📷The House group of sequoias on the Congress Trail: a paved loop that starts at General Sherman and passes among the finest trees in the forest. Within the first few metres, the crowds disappear. We did the whole loop. Two groups of sequoias packed tightly together are called The House and The Senate, hence the name of the trail. You also walk through a fallen trunk 📷The trail passing through a fallen, hollowed-out sequoia.
• Moro Rock 📷The staircase and handrail clinging to the side of Moro Rock: a granite dome that you climb by a staircase of more than 350 steps, cut into the rock in 1931. It’s steep but short. We went all the way up. The view takes in the snow-capped peaks of the Great Western Divide 📷Panorama of the snowy Sierra Nevada from the top of Moro Rock on one side, and the foothills down to the valley on the other.
• The Giant Forest and its museum 📷A group of giant sequoias with walkers at their foot: the forest has more than 2,000 giant sequoias. The small museum explains how they live, and the Big Trees Trail, right next door, circles a meadow edged with enormous trees. It’s the easiest trail in the park.
• Tunnel Log: a sequoia that fell across the road in 1937, through which a passage was cut. You can drive through it, if your vehicle is less than 2.40 m high.
• Crescent Meadow: a meadow ringed with sequoias, at the end of the same small road as Moro Rock. Bears are often seen there in spring.
• Tokopah Falls: a trail along a river, starting from Lodgepole, to a 365-metre waterfall. It’s at its strongest in May and June.
• Crystal Cave: a marble cave, reopened in 2025 after four years of closure. It can only be visited with a guide, from late May to autumn.
• Mineral King: a high valley at the end of a narrow 40 km road, open only in summer. For those who have time and like walking.
• Grant Grove, in Kings Canyon: an hour’s drive to the north, another sequoia grove with General Grant, the second-biggest tree in the world. We cover it in our guide to Kings Canyon.

Stories and good to know

• Sequoias need fire. The heat opens their cones, and the flames clear the ground where the seeds will germinate. Their thick, spongy bark protects them. Many trunks bear large black scars 📷A giant sequoia with a burnt trunk at the base and are doing perfectly well.
• Recent wildfires, however, have been too fierce, even for them. In 2021, during a major fire, firefighters wrapped the base of General Sherman in an aluminium blanket. The tree was untouched.
• General Sherman is neither the tallest nor the widest of trees. But no other has as much wood, and it’s still growing every year.
• A sequoia’s roots go down only a few metres. They do, however, spread a very long way around the trunk.
• Black bears aren’t always black. One of the two we came across was cinnamon brown. They were our very first wild bears, and they remain the memory of the day.

Practical information for your road trip

• Pass: we got in with our America the Beautiful pass. At the current rates, it pays for itself with this park alone: everything is explained in our guide to the national parks pass.
• Getting there: the south entrance, Ash Mountain, is 45 minutes from Visalia and about 4 hrs from Los Angeles. From the entrance, there’s another hour of hairpin bends to the Giant Forest. After that, allow 4 hrs to the Yosemite valley.
• The road: the Generals Highway climbs from 500 to over 2,000 metres in tight bends. Vehicles over 6.70 m are not advised between the south entrance and the Giant Forest. With a large motorhome, come in from the north, on the Kings Canyon side.
• Fuel: there’s no petrol station in the park, and no charging point. Fill up in Three Rivers or Visalia.
• Shuttles: in summer, free shuttles link the museum, General Sherman, Moro Rock and Crescent Meadow. On summer weekends and public holidays, the road to Moro Rock and Crescent Meadow is closed to cars: you can only get there by shuttle.
• Parking: the General Sherman car park fills up early at weekends and during the holidays. Come before 9am or in the late afternoon.
• Where to stay: in the park, Wuksachi Lodge and the campgrounds. Otherwise in Three Rivers, at the entrance, or in Visalia, which is bigger and cheaper.
• Combine it with: Kings Canyon on the same day or the next, then Yosemite, as we did on our road trip 1.

Our experience in Sequoia

We spent a day there in May 2024, arriving from Death Valley. We came in from the south, and ended the day at Grant Grove, in Kings Canyon, before heading off towards Yosemite.

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