Lonely Planet Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks

Lonely Planet Lonely Planet

Description

Lonely Planet Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Go fishing in Yosemite Valley; canoeing and kayaking in Mammoth Lakes, or horseback riding in King's Canyon -all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks and begin your journey now! Inside the Lonely Planet Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks Travel Guide: User-friendly highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices, emergency information, park seasonality, hiking trail junctions, viewpoints, landscapes, elevations, distances, difficulty levels, and durations Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, camping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, summer and winter activities, and hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Contextual insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - history, geology, wildlife, conservation Over 42 full-color trail and park maps and full-color images throughout Useful features - Travel with Children, Clothing and Equipment, and Day and Overnight Hikes Covers Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon National Park, King's Canyon Point, Badger Pass, Wawona, Tuolumne Meadows, Hetch Hetchy, Sierra National Forest and more The Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks, our most comprehensive guide to these parks, is perfect for both exploring top sights and taking roads less traveled. Looking to visit more national parks? Check out USA's National Parks, a new full-color guide that covers all 59 of the USA's national parks. Authors: Written and researched by Lonely Planet. About Lonely Planet: Since 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel media company with guidebooks to every destination, an award-winning website, mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveler community. Lonely Planet covers must-see spots but also enables curious travelers to get off beaten paths to understand more of the culture of the places in which they find themselves. eBook Features: (Best viewed on tablet devices and smartphones) Downloadable PDF and offline maps prevent roaming and data charges Effortlessly navigate and jump between maps and reviews Add notes to personalise your guidebook experience Seamlessly flip between pages Bookmarks and speedy search capabilities get you to key pages in a flash Embedded links to recommendations' websites Zoom-in maps and images Inbuilt dictionary for quick referencing Important Notice: The digital edition of this book may not contain all of the images found in the physical edition.

Sujets

• California

Informations

• Publié par: Lonely Planet Global Limited
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781788685870
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 44 Mo

Extrait

Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks

Contents

Plan Your Trip

Welcome to Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon
Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon Map
Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon Top 16
Need to Know
What’s New
If You Like…
Month by Month
Itineraries
Activities
Travel with Children
Travel with Pets

On The Road

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
Day Hikes
Overnight Hikes
Driving
Cycling
Other Activities
Winter Activities
Sights
Sleeping
Eating & Drinking
AROUND YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
Yosemite Gateways
South of Yosemite (Highway 41)
Eastern Sierra
SEQUOIA & KINGS CANYON NATIONAL PARKS
Day Hikes
Overnight Hikes
Driving
Other Activities
Sights
Sleeping
Eating & Drinking
Around Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks

Understand

Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon Today
History
Geology
Wildlife
Conservation

Survival Guide

Clothing & Equipment
Clothing
Navigation
Equipment
Buying & Renting Locally
Directory A–Z
Accessible Travel
Accommodations
Climate
Discount Cards
Electricity
Etiquette
Food
Insurance
Internet Access
Legal Matters
LGBT+ Travelers
Maps
Money
Opening Hours
Post
Public Holidays
Safe Travel
Solo Travelers
Telephone
Toilets
Tourist Information
Visas
Volunteering
Work
Transportation
Getting there & Away
Entering the Country/Region
Air
Land
Getting Around
Bicycle
Bus
Car & Motorcycle
Hitchhiking
Tours
Health & Safety
Insurance
Websites
Further Reading
Availability of Health Care
Infectious Diseases
Environmental Hazards
Safe Hiking
Behind the Scenes
Our Writers
Map Legend
Welcome to Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon

With fierce granite mountains brooding over high-altitude lakes, the Sierra Nevada is an exquisite topographic barrier enclosing magnificent natural landscapes and an adventurer’s wonderland.

Backcountry Bonanza
Spanning central California, the Sierra Nevada encompasses dazzling mountain canyons and some of the highest peaks in the country. Trails lure visitors to valleys of wildflowers and desolate pinnacles. Bears tear open logs, marmots whistle in warning, and crickets and frogs harmonize to a nightly fever pitch. Spending time in the wilderness resets your brain. Maybe it has something to do with the timelessness of the landscape – the ancient glaciers or the glow of the lakes at dusk and dawn.

Time Warps
This region has a past both wide and deep. Glaciers, though receding, gnaw at granite shoulders as they have for millennia. Prehistoric forests loom within the parks and at inhospitable heights beyond them. The volcanic forces that moved these mountains to life still rumble underfoot and in simmering hot springs. Humans have left their mark as well. Trails show the routes taken by indigenous Californians – the Sierra Miwok, the Paiute and the Shoshone – who traded between the western foothills and the Eastern Sierra. Pioneers abandoned mining camps to the elements, creating desolate ghost towns and the remains of forgotten railway lines.

Winter Wonderland
Summer may be high season, but after you’ve seen snow in the Sierra you might well question why. The peaks are some of the highest in the US, occasionally bursting to 14,000ft, and are blanketed by snow for much of the year. There are full-moon snowshoeing and cross-country adventures, plus the chance to camp under giant sequoias. Go swooshing across the hushed backcountry, barrel down powdery slopes, or just stay inside and warm your toes by a roaring wood fire.

High Peaks
Punctuated with fairy-tale spires, knobby domes and talus-encrusted mountaintops, the scenery in the national parks of Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon might just put a crick in your neck as you gaze at it all. A jaunt through Yosemite Valley is a ticker-tape parade of granite skyscrapers, with Half Dome taking a deep bow. Tempestuous Mt Whitney lords over the far-eastern reaches of Sequoia National Park. With wild rock formations, groves of the planet’s largest trees, astonishing waterfalls, deep canyons, unimaginably vast swaths of granite, humbling peaks and a four-season dance card, Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon are no less than perfect.

Paddling in Yosemite Valley | SRONGKROD/GETTY IMAGES ©

Why I Love Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon
By Michael Grosberg, Writer
When city life gets claustrophobic, the Sierra Nevada national parks beckon me. Whether driving down Kings Canyon Scenic Byway or hiking a mountain trail, the scale appears otherworldly, like being in an Albert Bierstadt painting or a CGI version of the American West. On the eastern side, where the desert meets snowcapped peaks, the road and the landscape seem endless and the contrast feels liberating. Being in the backcountry, whether in a national park or other wilderness area, my thoughts become effortlessly meditative as the rhythm of my pace and the challenge of the terrain are the only concerns.
For more, see our writers .
Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon’s Top 16

Spring Waterfalls
Nothing can strike you speechless like water plunging off a cliff. Standing at the base of a massive waterfall, hearing its roar and reveling in its drenching mist is simultaneously invigorating and humbling. Yosemite holds one of the world’s greatest collections of waterfalls and, in springtime, Yosemite Valley is spray central. In addition to the seasonal creeks tumbling over the valley’s walls, the iconic cataracts of Yosemite Falls and Bridalveil Fall will satisfy any falls fanatic.

JASON FINN/SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Top Experiences
Tuolumne Meadows & Tioga Road
Winter makes you wait to take in the beauty of Tuolumne , but it’s so worth it. In summer, after Tioga Rd has been plowed and the roadside walls of snow recede, make a beeline for Yosemite’s high country for carpets of outrageous wildflowers and a cornucopia of alpine lakes. Climbers clip in to tackle the park’s high peaks, backpackers lace their eager boots and mules plod the trails to stock the High Sierra camps. Explore the granite eye candy at one of the Cathedral Lakes or just roam Tuolumne’s creek-laced main meadow.

ADONIS VILLANUEVA/SHUTTERSTOCK ©


Top Experiences
Climbing Half Dome
Just hold on, don’t forget to breathe and – whatever you do – don’t look down. A pinnacle so popular that hikers need a permit to scale it, Half Dome lives on as Yosemite Valley’s coveted jewel and a must-reach-it obsession for millions. It’s a day hike longer than an average work day, an elevation gain equivalent to almost 480 flights of stairs, and a final stretch of near-vertical steps that melts even the strongest legs and arms to masses of quivering jelly.

CHRISTOPHER FAIRFAX/SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Top Experiences
Giant Forest
When it’s time to pay your respects to the most massive trees on the planet, there’s nowhere better to go than Sequoia National Park. Giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum) can live for almost 3000 years, and some of the ancient ones standing in the Giant Forest have been around since the fall of the Roman Empire. There the world’s largest living specimen, the General Sherman Tree , is taller than a 27-story building and measures over 100ft around its massive trunk – crane your neck as you stare in awe at its leafy crown.

DRIENDL GROUP/GETTY IMAGES ©

Top Experiences
El Capitan
A pale fortress rising abruptly from the Yosemite Valley floor, El Capitan is a majestic spectacle in the glow of dusk. Summiting the sheer granite and splintering cracks of this monolith is the vertigo-conquering achievement of a lifetime. Now the world standard for big-wall climbs, it was once deemed impossible to ascend. Strain your eyes to find the glowing, moth-like bivuoac shelters dangling from its face at night, and bite your nails tracking the climbers’ progress by day.

LYNN YEH/SHUTTERSTOCK ©


Top Experiences
Mt Whitney & the John Muir Trail
In for the long haul? Load up that pack and connect the dots from the heart of Yosemite to the pinnacle of Mt Whitney , the highest peak in the contiguous USA. A true adventure, the physically demanding, 211-mile John Muir Trail goes step by step up and over six Sierra passes topping 11,000ft. Join other blister-footed obsessives crossing chilly rivers and streams between bumper-to-bumper Yosemite Valley, the roadless backcountry of Kings Canyon and Sequoia and the oxygen-scarce Whitney summit.

Hikers on the Mt Whitney trail | DANITA DELIMONT/GETTY IMAGES ©


Top Experiences
Kings Canyon Scenic Byway
Marvel at soaring granite walls and river-carved clefts deeper than the Grand Canyon on this scenic drive , which connects Grant Grove and Cedar Grove in Kings Canyon National Park. Pull into Junction View just before sunset or dawn to truly appreciate the glacier-smoothed canyon, which John Muir called ‘a rival to the Yosemite.’ Twisting hairpin turns, sheer drop-offs and mile-high cliffs are all part of the thrill as you wind down to the bottom alongside the rushing Kings River.

BJÖRN ALBERTS/GETTY IMAGES ©

Top Experiences
Bodie State Historic Park
Hopscotch back in time to the era of the lawless Wild West, and imagine the quick-draw barroom brawls and frenzied gold strikes of the former boom town of Bodie . One of the West’s most authentic and best-preserved ghost towns, it’s accessed via a long road that bumps toward a desolate high valley. Now a serene landscape dotted with weather-battered wooden buildings, in its heyday it was renowned for its opium dens and more than 60 saloons.

CURTIS/SHUTTERSTOCK ©


Top Experiences
Mariposa Grove
Pace the needle-carpeted trails in a cathedral of ancient trees , where almost 500 hardy sequoias rocket to the sky. In the early evening, after the crowds have gone, you can explore in solitude and contemplate the thousands of years the trees have witnessed. Fire scars blaze the trunks, and you can walk through th