Sequoia National Park
A short walk from the ranger station, Cold Springs has 40 sites (nine walk-in sites) and is a peaceful, creek-side location with ridge views and a gorgeous forest setting of conifers and aspens. If you spend the night here at 7500ft, you'll be well on your way to acclimatizing for high-altitude hikes. The campground often fills up on summer weekends.
Vault toilets and potable water are available until early October.
29.45 MILES
The setting for countless ride-‘em-out movies, the popular Lone Ranger TV series and, more recently, parts of Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008) and Quentin…
Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks
12.45 MILES
Joined by a high-altitude roadway bisecting a national forest and contiguous with a number of wilderness areas, these two parks combined offer vast…
10.8 MILES
A scenic subalpine valley at 7500ft, Mineral King is Sequoia’s backpacking mecca and a good place to find solitude. Gorgeous and gigantic, its glacially…
12.11 MILES
This 3-sq-mile grove protects the park’s most gargantuan tree specimens. Among them is the world’s biggest, the General Sherman tree, rocketing 275ft into…
19.6 MILES
West of Lone Pine, the jagged incisors of the Sierra surge skyward in all their raw and fierce glory. Cradled by scores of smaller pinnacles, Mt Whitney…
10.79 MILES
A quarter-mile staircase climbs 350 steps (over 300ft) to the top of Sequoia’s iconic granite dome at an elevation of 6725ft, offering mind-boggling views…
28.63 MILES
This sequoia grove off Generals Hwy is astounding. The paved half-mile General Grant Tree Trail is an interpretive walk that visits a number of mature…
11.99 MILES
By volume the largest living tree on earth, the massive General Sherman Tree rockets into the sky and waaay out of the camera frame. Pay your respects to…
9.96 MILES
Jaw-dropping spectacular view of the Sierra Mountains. It's reasonably easily accessible via a 1-mile walk along the High Sierra Trail from Crescent…
10.08 MILES
The Potwisha people, a band of Monache (also known as Western Mono), originally lived at this site. When the first white settler, Hale Tharp, arrived in…
10.46 MILES
Said to have been described by John Muir as the ‘gem of the Sierra,’ this lush meadow is buffered by a forest of firs and giant sequoias. High grass and…
10.79 MILES
A quarter-mile staircase climbs 350 steps (over 300ft) to the top of Sequoia’s iconic granite dome at an elevation of 6725ft, offering mind-boggling views…
10.8 MILES
A scenic subalpine valley at 7500ft, Mineral King is Sequoia’s backpacking mecca and a good place to find solitude. Gorgeous and gigantic, its glacially…
10.86 MILES
Visitors can drive through a 2000-year-old tree, which fell naturally in 1937. It once stood 275ft high with a base measuring 21ft in diameter. Regular…
11.69 MILES
In the 1930s, no one anticipated the development of monster SUVs. About 1.5 miles north of the Foothills Visitor Center, a flat granite boulder on the…
11.73 MILES
Bordering long stretches of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, this national forest area, named after the enormous Sequoia trees it contains, was…