Kings Canyon NP

[John Kasaian]

i just returned from a camping trip with the Boy Scouts. We were down at Canyon View in Cedar Grove---the bridge is out so it is a 3 mile hike or drive to get across to the store, which suited me just fine;) ---
The weather was perfect, the Kings is still running with gusto--we could hear it all night:D ---and four deer and five bear were sighted over the weekend at our camp ground, Everyone raved about Zumwalt Meadows and I saw several places I want to revisit with my camera. NO crowds NO traffic---thoroughly enjoyable. Since Kings Canyon is an easy day trip for me I really don't have much reason to camp there(Seqouia NP, otoh with it's slow curvey roads demand more time to explore than there is daylight)
Any Californians looking for a crowdless autumn refuge to play with a big camera would do well to consider Kings Canyon, IMHO:D

[Darin Boville]

John is just kidding, of course. There is no such place as the so-called "Kings Canyon." Doesn't exist. Don't look for it. There is a place marked on the map as "Kings Canyon" but it is no canyon at all, just a patch of weeds. Forget about it. Boring dumb place.

--Darin

[Drew Wiley]

Yeah. No such place. I hiked back to Mineral King in the dark Sat and finally heated up some Dinty Moore stew on the tailgate at midnite after not eating all day. Had been on the trail over a week in every kind of weather imaginable (except hot, thankfully). Didn't carry any color film this time, because if I had I wouldn't get in any mileage at all - I would've been stopping to shoot every fifty yards. Tough life watching a young black bear feeding on gooseberries right below a waterfall hundreds of feet high ... or should I have aimed the Ebony at one of the other soaring falls behind me? One day searching for a lost hiker, with a fortunate ending. Yeah, no such place, standing atop several high passes and seeing the entire Sierra crest covered with fresh snow and lightning flashing over the Kaweah peaks. Well, techinically not Kings Canyon but contiguous Sequoia backcountry. Hours on end wading through deep thimbleberries
more reminiscent of Mt Rainier than anything stereotypically southern Sierra. Every
campsite all week long was more spectacular than the one before. No easy way in or
out however - gotta get over those passes in the AM before all hell breaks loose. The
Mineral King road itself is a piece of cake - I don't know where the reputation for being
scary comes from. It's a good wide road and almost entirely paved - just gotta watch
blind corners for idiots driving on wrong side of road. But very little traffic anyway.
And the rangers up that canyon are really nice. I'll take Sequoia-Kings over Yosemite
any day.

[Darin Boville]

I always hate when I see an article about KC bragging about how few visitors it has versus the big Y, etc. Keep that up and it won't last. Maybe we could use a code phrase to refer to KC so google searches won't turn it up. If we aren't careful KC will have its own four million tourists a year!

I nominate that KC should, in the future, be referred to as "Malarial Swamp Canyon."

Other nominations?

--Darin

[Drew Wiley]

In principle I agree, Darin. I won't even mention "exactly" where I was, because it was
in my opinion way more spectacular than Yos Valley, yet one would have a great deal
of trouble even finding a reference to the place or picture of it on the web. Kings Can
is of course not one canyon but a system of the deepest canyons on the continent.
The road technically enters Cedar Grove, barely into the Park at all. The rest is wilderness with a few main trails, yet significant areas totally untrailed. Mountaineers
and determined off-trail backpackers already know about many of these places; but
the terrain is very well self-protected from the casual intruder. I encountered exactly
zero tourist-types all week. My sister's in-laws came over from Holland, spent a few
days in the Big Ditch (Yos), fled the crowds, went down to SEKI and truly enjoyed it.
My boss (who certainly is no hiker type) spent a week at the Sequoia Lodge and
utterly relaxed. No crowds anywhere. But like I already posted, you can't just mosey
into some of these places. Where I was involved three high passes, two of them nearly
12000 ft with grades of almost five thousand feet each.

[Michael S]

King's Canyon is the best kept secret in California...ssshhhhh!!!

[Drew Wiley]

Perhaps we should refer to it as KFC. That should bamboozle the uninitiated.

[David Karp]

Love it there. Even just the tiny portion that is car and day hike accessible is great.

[Darin Boville]

Perhaps we should refer to it as KFC. That should bamboozle the uninitiated.

I like it!

--Darin

[Scott Davis]

If you call it that, you'll have gazillions of Eric Cartman types blocking the entrance with their 5-by-5 figures, looking for Colonel Sanders. They'll re-name the Grant and Sherman redwoods after fast-food restaurants.

[Drew Wiley]

I got pretty irritated once on a dirt road on the Navajo Reservation. All kinds of pickups
were stirring up dust around noon. Then all of a sudden, there was this KFC chicken
joint in the middle of a dirt lot in nowhere. Reminds me of all the abominations done to
remote places like Torry Utah right outside Capitol Reef. But KFC Canyon has no such
needs, because there are plenty of junk food options just down the hill along Hwy 99
etc. In between is the most valuable Citrus zone in the US, bigger even than Florida;
but now they want to put a high-speed rail line right thru there so people can commute
between Sacto and LA .....@####**!! (I'm all for rail between work in cities and bedroom communities ... but thirty billion of pork barrel money for that route????)

[Drew Wiley]

More anecdotes ... Although I grew up smack on the canyon of the San Joaquin, it was just fifteen air miles from the lower Kings, which if anything, is even less crowded than the NP high country. For years I've hauled my 8x10 up over waterfalls and hillsides
with nearly 60-degree pitches and have never once encountered another person. Atop one hill I noticed an old miner's mule trail up the opposite canyon wall and counted 120 successive switchbacks. That's right, 120! Getting down those hills can be a lot tricker,
and involves crab-stepping and climbing down facing the hill. Not bad when you're
facing into Spring wildflowers virtually every step. I'm convinced there are still a few
canyon walls and remote side canyons up in that country which have never been
entered by man yet.

[evan clarke]

We were only 10 or 15 mile away from "KFC" a few years ago but on the wrong side of the mountains and it was the middle of October with snow flying in the high altitudes..Wish we could have gone...EC

[Drew Wiley]

Well I was in blizzards and hail and just about everything imaginable all last week.
Perfect photog weather. The fellow hiking with me probably thought I was being a bit anal when I demanded my full gear list was checked off before he could travel with me. I told him the difference between fun and death was sometimes only a decent set of boots and a belt pack containing a sweater and parka. Of course we needed a lot more for eight days out. So we got to the top of about a 12,000 ft pass with wonderful rock and magnificent panoramas. It was windless under a blue sky, yet I
told him we didn't even have time for a candy bar. I headed right down the other side and even cut off the trail for a mild class 3 shortcut down into timber. Within
15 min of leaving the top the entire sky was black, horizon to horizon, the pass was
lost in the clouds, and thunder was ripping all around up there. A couple days later we encountered the backcountry ranger, who told us about already finding a couple of naked bodies of disoriented hikers. Ironically, the last stages of hypothermia make one feel hot, and they'll strip off their clothes. At least they go quick that way.
Then when the storm temporarily cleared, a couple of rescue choppers were hunting for someone else in trouble. One day I joined a search for another lost hiker, and fortunately found him well-equipped and safe, but distinctly spooked. It's wonderful
country, but needs respect and intelligent planning.