PLEASE BE AWARE OF THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS:
Road Conditions || Bear Activity || No Gasoline within Park Boundaries; Plan Ahead and Buy It Nearby ||
No RV Dump Station in Grant
Grove or Cedar Grove
|| New Lodging in Sequoia || New Lodging in Kings Canyon
To find out current road conditions, phone 559-565-3341; when the recording starts press 9, then press 4.
Black bears are still active at higher elevations.
Despite snow on the ground, black bears are still active in the Grant Grove and Lodgepole/Giant Forest areas. These bears tend to become destructive and aggressive once they learn to get food from cars, picnic tables, and backpacks. Although they are after our food and not us, people can get hurt. Too often these bears must be killed. The park is trying very hard to protect both the bears and the visitors and is serious about food storage regulations -- you may be fined if you do not store your food properly.
A metal food storage box is provided at every site in most campgrounds. The smallest boxes are 47-1/2 inches long (120.5cm) x 17" deep (43cm) x 17-1/2" high (44cm). Avoid bringing items that will not fit. Check bulletin boards for details on how to successfully keep food from bears.
There are no gasoline stations immediately within Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks boundaries. However, gas is sold year-round in the nearby communities of Three Rivers and Squaw Valley and at Hume Lake in the national forest area immediately adjacent to the parks (near Grant Grove in Kings Canyon Park). In summer, gas is sold at Stony Creek (between Lodgepole and Grant Grove) and at Kings Canyon Lodge (between Grant Grove and Cedar Grove).
Wuksachi Village, which opened in spring of 1999, has replaced the old facilities that were removed from the Giant Forest. This visitor-service area includes lodging, a restaurant, and a gift shop. Wuksachi (pronounced "wook-sa'-chee") is just off the Generals Highway four miles north of the General Sherman Tree.
Why did Giant Forest facilities close? The immediate reason was the outdated sewage treatment plant. The State of California required that it cease operation, as it no longer met state standards for treating effluent. A modern water and sewage treatment plant was built a few miles north of Giant Forest to serve the new Wuksachi Village.
A longer-term issue was damage to the giant sequoia trees of this famous grove. Their roots bore the brunt of the heavy use and maintenance of dining facilities, shops, roads, parking lots, hundreds of cabins, and utilities -- drinking water, waste water, and electrical systems. Young sequoias were not sprouting due to heavy foot traffic and the suppression of the natural fires that prepare the soil for their seeds. The entire forest was being affected.
Public safety was also an issue. Cabins sat immediately under sequoias, which drop huge limbs unpredictably. Several buildings were badly damaged by falling branches while people were in them.
These conflicts in Giant Forest and ways to reduce them had been discussed for decades. A public planning process, started in the late 1970s, concluded that removing the structures was the best solution. Park facilities were moved out of the grove. The Lodgepole area was developed to provide camping nearby. The last commercial operations closed in October of 1998, and the buildings began to come down.
The Giant Forest Village area was redesigned to make it a great place to experience sequoias. The old market building reopened as the Giant Forest Museum, complete with new exhibits about the Big Trees. We are improving and relocating trails to make them more accessible.
We have also repaired a lot of the damage -- removed and relocated parking lots, filled and recontoured road cuts to their original slopes, and revegetated some of the gaps where buildings once stood. In a move not often seen in today's world, development has given way so that nature can reclaim a special spot.
Learn more about restoring a sequoia grove or visiting Giant Forest.
Kings Canyon National Park now has a 30-unit lodge in the Grant Grove Village area. Open year-round, the John Muir Lodge is a modern addition to the rustic cabins available there. The lodge opened in the spring of 1999.