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| This is a picture of Saw Tooth in Mineral King, Sequoia national Park. If you continue driving up our road 2 miles you will enter Sequoia National Park. The Mineral King recreation area has hiking, fishing, and amazing views. |
Sequoia National Park is a national park in the southern Sierra Nevada, east of Visalia, California, in the United States of America. It was established in 1890 as the second U.S. national park, after Yellowstone National Park. The park spans 404,051 acres (1,635.14 km2). Encompassing a vertical relief of nearly 13,000 feet (3,962 m), the park contains among its natural resources the highest point in the contiguous 48 United States, Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet (4,421 m) above sea level. The park is south of and contiguous with Kings Canyon National Park; the two are administered by the National Park Service as one unit, called Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
The park is most famous for its Giant Sequoia trees, including the General Sherman tree, one of the largest trees on Earth. The General Sherman tree grows in the Giant Forest, which contains five out of the ten largest trees in the world, in terms of wood volume. The Giant Forest is connected by the park's Generals Highway to Kings Canyon National Park's Grant Grove, home to the General Grant tree among other sequoias. The park's Giant Sequoia forests are part of 202,430 acres (81,920 ha) of old-growth forests shared by Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Indeed, the parks preserve a landscape that still resembles the southern Sierra Nevada before Euro-American settlement.
SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK
SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK
SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK IN CALIFORNIA
Ansel Lake, Sequoia National Park
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MAP OF SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK Front country
Many park visitors enter Sequoia National Park through its southern entrance near the town of Three Rivers at Ash Mountain at 1,700 ft (518 m) elevation. The lower elevations around Ash Mountain contain the only National Park Service-protected California Foothills ecosystem, consisting of blue oak woodlands, foothills chaparral, grasslands, yucca plants, and steep, mild river valleys. The foothills region is also home to abundant wildlife: bobcats, foxes, ground squirrels, rattlesnakes, and mule deer are commonly seen in this area, and more rarely, reclusive mountain lions are seen as well. The California Black Oak, Quercus kelloggii, is a key transition species between the chaparral and higher elevation conifer forest.
At higher elevations in the front country, between 5,500 and 9,000 feet (1,700 and 2,700 m) in elevation, the landscape becomes montane forest-dominated coniferous belt. Found here are Ponderosa, Jeffrey, Sugar, and Lodgepole pine trees, as well as abundant white and red fir. Found here too are the mighty Sequoia trees, the most massive living trees on earth. Between the trees, spring and summer snowmelts sometimes fan out to form lush, though delicate, meadows. In this region, visitors often see mule deer, Douglas squirrel, and American black bears, who have been known to break into unattended cars to steal food left by careless visitors.
