SEQUOIA / KINGS
CANYON TOUR
May 19-21, 2006
Did we have perfect
temperatures and sunshine, heat, cold, rain, or all of the above on this
three-day pannier tour? Yes, we had
all, but what’s so unusual about that?
The payoff was drop-dead mountain scenery, a startled deer just a few
feet in front of two riders, a bear munching flowers in a meadow, and massive
and majestic sequoia trees in
We started at Lemon
Cove, elevation about 600 ft., temperature in the eighties, to begin the long
climb into Sequoia National Park up the General’s Highway to our camp at Lodgepole, elevation close to 7,000 ft. Wildflowers smiled at us along the roadside,
waterfalls sparkled and danced, and the distant snow-capped mountains stood
majestically. As we ascended, cooler air
and fragrant pine forests replaced the lowland flowers, and then we were
treated to riding among the giant trees that give the park its name. A perfect day!
The rain started
during the night, but Saturday morning dawned clear and cool with a light
covering of frost on the picnic table.
We met at Grant Grove for lunch after a magnificent ride in and out of
river valleys, over Big Baldy Summit, and a stop at the
The rain started at
midnight, but this time there was no let-up.
In the morning we packed our wet tents to start the rainy climb out of
the canyon. Again, we met at Grant Grove
for lunch before descending (brrr! cold and wet) via
a quiet, forested byway complete with hundreds of blooming dogwood trees. Lemon Cove was no longer that hot place where
we started; indeed, the rainstorm extended all the way to
Was this outing an
adventure? You bet. Participants were Janice and Larry Moore,
Gloria Nafel, Gunther Hemmersbach (who came all the way from