This past weekend my wife and I traveled back up to the Rough Fire in Kings Canyon Park, home of the giant sequoia’s. On the way up the mountain we passed small cities of fire fighters and their camps along the road.
A close up into the mess tent.
pallets of fire hose.
A mobile laundry. Rows of pup tents in the background where fire fighters sleep with temps into the 100’s. Night temps around 90 degrees still at midnight with the thick layer of smoke.
Pallets of ice chests and suction pumps. A mobile food prep truck.
Boxes of new fire hose.
Piles of fire hose to roll up
As we passed the makeshift community of fire fighters, we head up the hill to the park entrance. About ten miles above the firefighter camp is the Cat Haven. All of the wild cats had to be shipped out. Some went to the Fresno Zoo, some to Reno Nevada, San Diego and Texas. My wife has been donating money since it started, in $100.00 chunks. I want a new gun she wants to save the cats. The cats are winning. Some may remember this place made National News a couple years ago when one of the lions killed its trainer.
At the 4000 foot level we start to encounter the dead and dying trees. They are weakened by the drought and the beetles move in to finish them off. Environmentalists will not allow the forestry to spray to help kill the beetles, so the eat the forests dead.
At the park entrance there is a giant Sequoia. I remember this tree as a kid back in 1964 and I swear I can see its grown some…..
Everywhere tree grow out of shear granite.
Look at this pine growing right out of crack in the rock.
The rough fire was started from lightning and most of the tree in the park show some kind of lightning damage.
This is looking off towards where the fire is still burning
Up here in the park at 7500 feet there is a lot less damage but one can see the trees are weak and water is needed this year or I would not be surprised to see the entire Sierra’s brown off next year.
We made it to Wuksashi Lodge and had lunch.
My happy wife eating her prime rib sandwich.
All of these granite peaks are the back side of Mount Whitney. The back side being the Fresno side. Mt Whitney is accessible from the east side of the Sierra’s.
These peaks are about 13,000 feet tall.
I’m coming back when there is water to see this. This has to be a huge waterfall. About a thousand feet or more.
That’s a lot of solid granite.
We have been geeting plenty of rain here, I wish there were some way we could ship it to you. I visited California a couple of weeks ago (LA/ Glendale Area) and I hated to see how brown everything was. I was glad to see it was not your trees that were dead, when I read the title I thought you had lost some.
John