Southwest Journey: Day 9 – Kings Canyon Nationwide Park
Regardless of the nasty climate, we loved our first Sequoia expertise, however we have been keen to go away the upper altitude to get pleasure from dryer, hotter climate.
The Sequoia and Kings Canyon Nationwide Parks are situated in shut proximity to 1 one other, which makes it a standard apply to go to each parks throughout the identical journey. That was precisely our plan.
The drive from Sequoia to Kings Canyon is lower than 100 km, nevertheless it took us three hours to finish due to the thick fog and 0 visibility that made driving the slender, mountain roads extraordinarily tough and ugly.
Though the drive was treacherous, we weren’t frightened in regards to the climate as a result of I knew that Kings Canyon is at a a lot decrease altitude. We have been sure it will be drier and way more nice there.
However we had yet another urgent problem to resolve. As soon as once more, we didn’t have a spot to camp in a single day. The day we devoted to exploring Kings Canyon was the primary day of Memorial Weekend in the US, which meant all of the campgrounds had been booked months upfront. Even campsites increased within the mountains the place rain and chilly climate made it hardly usable and almost certainly unenjoyable have been packed.
Plus, since you can not camp in non-designated areas in any Nationwide Park, we had very restricted choices for wild tenting between the 2 parks.
Ultimately, the web neighborhood helped us discover a spot for the night time. Visiting freecampsites.web, I discovered references to a free campground situated close to the doorway of Kings Canyon Nationwide Park. It’s situated simply off the aspect of the street on the seashore of the Kings Canyon River. Since you can not e book the campground on-line, only a few folks learn about it.
After we entered the campground round midday, we couldn’t consider our eyes—all eight campsites have been vacant, and the campground was utterly empty. We grabbed probably the most secluded spot and drove by way of Kings Canyon and hiked within the park for the remainder of the day.
Bear Scare
It was not our first go to to the Sierra Mountains, so we knew in regards to the excessive likelihood of encountering bears within the mountains. Usually, bears don’t pose a hazard to folks for the reason that solely purpose they normally strategy vacationers is to steal meals. All hikers and campers should pay attention to the problem and know tips on how to reduce the danger of a harmful encounter by correctly storing their meals, particularly at night time.
Apparently, Kings Canyon has a excessive focus of bears as a result of we’ve got by no means earlier than seen such preventative measures. There are indicators posted all over the place with directions on tips on how to take care of meals whereas tenting and mountain climbing. The overall rule is that you just can not depart any meals unsupervised additional than an arm’s size or it might be stolen by bears.
Once you enter the park, park attendants give all guests a brief lecture on bears. Each campground is provided with steel meals bins and a compulsory rule that campers retailer their meals within the bins each night time. Practically all of the meals bins are deformed by deep scratches made by the bears foraging and attempting to claw their method into the bins for meals.
You can even hire scent resistant meals canisters that make it attainable to hike within the canyon with out attracting bears or different animals.
The issue was that our campground didn’t have any steel meals bins nor have been there any park attendants to ask if the campsite was situated in a harmful space.
We saved our meals in our cooler and drug it 50 meters away from the campsite. We additionally determined to sleep within the automotive.
Nothing occurred that night time and we discovered our meals intact the subsequent morning.
We solely had sooner or later to discover Kings Canyon, which was sufficient to fall in love with the park. Now, it’s undoubtedly on our to do listing for our subsequent journey. The plan is to spend three to 4 days mountain climbing within the mountains. We definitely plan on bringing scent-proof backpacks for a good safer hike.
