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A Park Hub Field Guide

Lat 36.5654° N
Long 118.7719° W

Elevation1,370 – 14,505 ft

California · Stamp 14 / 63

Sequoia

National Park · Established 1890

The largest living things on Earth stand here, older than the Roman Empire and still, somehow, growing.

Area404,063 acres

TrailheadThree Rivers, California

Visitors1.1M / yr

Scroll to begin the ascent

Live · Generals Highway open Crystal Cave requires advance reservation 1 active alert 72°F · Giant Forest Live layer, from the National Park Service

Best windowMay–Oct · snow closes high country in winter Getting there1 hr from Visalia · 4.5 hr from Los Angeles Fee$35 / vehicle · 7 days

★★★★★ 4.9 from 11 travelers 2 visitor stories 1.1M annual visitors Grounded in live NPS data

Sequoia · Mile 01 · The Story

The largest living things
on the planet, still growing.

Nothing prepares you for the base of the General Sherman Tree. You know intellectually that it is the largest living single-stem organism on Earth by volume, 275 feet tall, over 36 feet across at the base, and your eyes still refuse to process the number. It has been growing since before the Roman Republic existed, adding roughly enough wood each year to build a normal-sized tree, because at this scale, more surface means more growth even as the rate slows.

Giant sequoias only grow naturally in about 70 groves scattered along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, nowhere else on Earth, and this park protects the largest and finest of them. Fire is not their enemy here; it is closer to a requirement. Sequoia cones need heat to open and release their seeds, and for millennia these forests burned every few years in fires that thinned the understory without ever reaching the giants' fire-resistant bark.

Come for the impossible scale of General Sherman. Stay for the fact that you can drive through a fallen one. Read the story, trust the live data above for what is open today, and when you leave, collect the stamp.

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“

The Big Tree, this most Godlike of all the living things of the world, is a fitting subject for prayer.

John Muir, on visiting the Sierra sequoia groves

Tunnel Log · Crescent Meadow Road

"The mountains are calling and I must go."

John Muir

Sequoia · Mile 02 · The Essentials

Best Things to Do in Sequoia

Six ways to spend your time, from a short paved walk to the world's largest tree to a granite dome with a view over the whole range.

See

General Sherman Tree

A half-mile paved trail down to the largest tree on Earth by volume. Go early; the parking lot fills fast and the walk back up is real work at elevation.

Everyone · 1 hr

Climb Moro Rock

351 concrete-and-stone steps up a granite dome to a 360° view of the Great Western Divide. Narrow, steep, and worth every step.

The signature climb

Drive

Generals Highway

The main road linking Sequoia and Kings Canyon, winding through groves and switchbacks with pullouts at every major sight.

Casual · road-trippers

Explore

Crystal Cave

A marble cavern with a half-mile trail down to the entrance. Tickets are sold only in advance online, never at the gate.

Reservation required

Drive through Tunnel Log

A 1937 fallen sequoia with a tunnel cut through it, wide enough for most passenger vehicles on Crescent Meadow Road.

Everyone · 15 min

Camp

Lodgepole Campground

Central to the Giant Forest trails, along the Marble Fork of the Kaweah River. Reserve early on Recreation.gov.

Campers · book ahead

Free · Ready in Seconds

Free AI Trip Planner

Plan Your Sequoia Trip

Answer a few questions right here — we'll map your day, stop by stop, with a route, timings, weather, and a packing checklist grounded in real park data. No account, no leaving this page.

Free preview · no card required

When the Crowds ComeMonthly visitors · tap a year

Illustrative shape · wires to official NPS visitation stats · summer peaks shown in gold

General Sherman · The Long Walk In

"There is a peculiar computation of years in a tree that no calendar can hold."

Adapted from park naturalist writing on the giant sequoia groves

Sequoia · Mile 03 · Trails & Viewpoints

Best Hikes in Sequoia, by Difficulty

Every trail rated honestly, with distance, climb, and a note on which giants you will meet along the way.

General Sherman Trail

Easy

0.5 mi-200 ft~45 min

Paved the whole way to the base of the world's largest tree by volume. The walk back up is the only real effort. No permit.

Big Trees Trail

Easy

1.2 miflat~40 min

A boardwalk loop around Round Meadow with a dozen named giants and interpretive signs on sequoia biology. No permit.

Moro Rock

Moderate

0.5 mi+300 ft~1 hr

351 steps carved into granite with handrails and narrow ledges, ending at one of the best views in the Sierra. Not for those uneasy with heights. No permit.

Tokopah Falls

Easy–Mod

3.8 mi+600 ft~2.5 hr

Along the Marble Fork to a 1,200-foot cascade tumbling off a granite headwall, best in late spring snowmelt. No permit.

Congress Trail

Easy–Mod

2 mi+200 ft~1.5 hr

A quiet loop connecting from General Sherman past the President Tree and the Senate Group, with far fewer people than the main trail. No permit.

Permit · overnight

Alta Peak

Extreme

13.8 mi+4,000 ft9–11 hr

A grueling climb to a summit above 11,000 feet with a view over the entire Great Western Divide. Wilderness permit required for overnight camping.

Crystal Cave tickets sold only in advance online · wilderness permits via Recreation.gov for overnight camping · no permit for day hikes

Sequoia National Park at a Glance

1 General Sherman Tree

2 Giant Forest Museum

3 Moro Rock

4 Tunnel Log

5 Crystal Cave

6 Sequoia Visitor Center

Stops shown in visit order. Build a plan above and this map updates to your exact stops.

Sequoia · Mile 04 · Life Among the Giants

Wildlife in Sequoia: Animals You Might See

Tap any animal to learn its story. Soon, the app will let you log what you spot and keep a life list for every park.

Common throughout the sequoia groves and well habituated to people. Food storage lockers are mandatory at every trailhead and campsite.

Grazes the meadows around the Giant Forest, often unbothered by the boardwalk crowds a few feet away.

A federally endangered subspecies found only in these mountains, recovering from a population low of under 125 animals in the 1990s.

The crested blue thief of every picnic table in the park. Smart, loud, and shameless. Keep food sealed and enjoy the attitude from a distance.

A small, energetic squirrel that harvests thousands of sequoia cones each year, dropping them for later use and inadvertently helping seeds reach the ground.

Patrols the forest almost entirely unseen, keeping deer populations in check. You will not spot one, and that fact alone should tell you something about how wild this park still is.

A native beetle that normally poses little threat to healthy giant sequoias, but has begun killing drought-stressed trees as the Sierra climate shifts.

Plant Life in Sequoia: What Grows Here

Grows naturally in only about 70 groves on the Sierra Nevada's western slope and nowhere else. Fire-adapted bark up to two feet thick protects mature trees from all but the most extreme blazes.

North America's tallest pine, with cones that can reach two feet long. Shares the mixed-conifer forest with the sequoias at mid-elevation.

A small, downward-facing pink flower that appears in the wet meadows of the Giant Forest each spring, easy to miss and worth the look.

Common in the mixed-conifer zone alongside the sequoias, identifiable by its flat, silvery-blue needles and smooth gray bark on younger trees.

A twisted, smooth-barked shrub covering the lower foothills below the sequoia groves, blooming with small pink-white flowers in late winter.

A native shrub found almost exclusively growing in the shade beneath giant sequoias, part of a specialized community of plants that thrives only in their company.

Fun Facts About Sequoia

Fact 01

The General Sherman Tree is 275 feet tall and over 36 feet across at the base, the largest living single-stem organism on Earth by volume.

Fact 02

Giant sequoias can live for more than 3,000 years, and some in these groves were already ancient when the Roman Republic was founded.

Fact 03

Sequoia cones need fire's heat to open and release their seeds, making periodic burning essential to the grove's survival, not a threat to it.

Fact 04

Established in 1890, Sequoia was only the second national park in the United States, created specifically to protect the groves from logging.

Sequoia · Provisions

Gear for this parkvia AvantLink

Trekking poles (Moro Rock)REI

Layered jacketBackcountry

2L hydration packOsprey

Stay nearbyvia Hipcamp

Forest sites near Three Rivers
Fifteen minutes from the entrance, river sound included, from $33 a night.

Free Sequoia checklistdigital · $0

The printable trail and packing checklist in the field-guide style. Take it, join the trail list.

Sequoia · Mile 05 · From the Field Journal

Go Deeper on Sequoia

Stories, guides, and hard-won tips from the trail. The full Sequoia deep dive lives on the journal.

Trail Guide

★SequoiaPark Hub · Collected

Your passport

One stamp,
one story.

Log the visit, keep your story, and watch the map of all sixty-three fill in behind you. Every stamp has a keepsake worth holding.

Sequoia · Mile 06 · Where to Next

Keep the Journey Going

Next park

Kings Canyon

One entrance, one fee, one drive north: from the largest tree on Earth to a canyon carved a mile deep.

Open Stamp 29 → The collection

All 63 Parks

See the full map and track every stamp you have earned.

View the map → Plan

Build a Trip

Turn Sequoia into a road trip with a custom, day-by-day itinerary.

Start planning → Go deeper

The Sequoia Deep Dive

The long-form guide: every trail, season, and secret, on the journal.

Read it →

Carry the field guide

Offline maps, your passport, and every park in your pocket on the trail.

The Book

Keepsake

The Park Hub field guide

The printed edition, part atlas, part journal, one story per park.

The Shop

Prints · pins · passport

Take Sequoia home

Field-guide posters, enamel stamps, and the passport book to fill in.

Forty-nine parks remain

"The parks do not belong to one state or to one section... they belong as much to the man of Massachusetts, of Michigan, of Florida, as they do to the people of California, of Wyoming, and of Arizona."

Stephen Mather · first director of the National Park Service

Begin your journey