Wrong way in Sequoia
“Is this the way to Fresno?”
We were a few miles up a windy dirt road in the Sequoia National Forest at a dispersed camping area. The view from our created camp site looked over the steep valley and outward to another mountain range in the near distance.
“Fresno? Um, no.”
The sun was setting which meant the mountainous roads were about to get very dark in a place where the sky filled with stars you would never see from any city or suburbia.
The man asking was by himself in a rental vehicle and we kindly turned him back down the dirt road and suggested he make a right on the main paved road once he reached it. “My google maps told me to come here.”
Sequoia Park, we discovered, was an amazing experience and one with nearly zero cell signal. The expansive roads took you to the edge of thousand foot cliffs and down to hot desert canyons. Along with camp sites, gas stations were also dispersed and required planning. If you were starting to get low, you did not want to get too far into the park only to have to return an hour or more for a fill up.
It was almost too accessible. The road side attractions, like the largest sequoia and adjacent groves drew tourists from nearby California cities like Los Angeles. A simple GPS input could get to into the park, but once you were in, you were on your own. Even as fairly prepared campers, we got lost on occasion due to the limited signs to assure you that you were going in the right direction. Getting stuck without water, or with a flat tire on a one lane cliff side road that claimed to eventually take you to the high Sierra’s, was easily possible for the average tourist, as our Fresno seeker demonstrated.
While I was in Colorado last summer, I felt like the more treacherous terrain at least required vehicle preparation. Exploring the mountainous areas there, I was usually feeling uneasy in my Camry accompanied by about five Subarus and a few 4Runners. Not in the Sequoias, we were matched in our sedan and usually by family vehicles too filled with kids and aunts and uncles to possibly have spare water jugs.
Sequoia was one of those attractions that can test human preparedness, whether guests know it or not. It can look and feel unreal like Disneyland, but there aren’t many kiosk resources to turn to when one path looks the same as the next. In 2019, one traveling nurse was lost for days only to be saved by her SOS symbol created with rocks. We the basics and a map, but no where near satellite phone in hand-prepared.
Compared to a person who’s last effort to find his way home was to pull up a dirt road, we fit in the semi-prepared category. In that man’s decision to follow his google maps up an unmarked dusty road instead of continuing on smooth two-lane pavement, I imagine he was more in search of running into someone to ask before day turned to night than to actually finding Fresno.
After he pulled away, we could not stop laughing,
“Why! Why would anyone think this was the road to take out of the park?! I don’t care what my GPS says I’m not making that turn to look for Fresno.”
Then we remembered that earlier in the day we saw a couple walking up the side of the road instead of on trails. They were looking very drained and tired. We laughed at why someone would walk up the hot pavement with almost no shoulder when there were thousands of miles of scenic trails. A few hours later, however, we found ourselves on the same shoulder, trudging up the steamy pavement with empty water bottles, laughing at ourselves and our arrogance. It was our turn to give up on finding the right trail to the parking lot and instead take the road route that might at least have the mercy of a shuttle should we get too exhausted.
On our hikes we imagined what it was like for explorers venturing west through the deserts to come across this mountain range. We reached the top of a peak, only to see more seemingly endless peaks.
“Who do you think had to climb up here to look out for which path to take in their horse-drawn wagons?”
“Definitely the new guy in the caravan.”
“Can you imagine after climbing this thing having to report back to the boss there there is zero easy passage and just more mountains??”
“No wonder people just gave up and settled in Colorado.”
Sequoia is a trip and a trip worth taking. I’m sure its initial founders would take one look at the impressive drivable infrastructure and correlating maps of today and welcome everyone and their mother to come check out the wilderness.
Caroline Walsh’s comedic memoir, Fairly Smooth Operator: My Life Occasionally at the Tip of the Spear, is available for preorder September 2021. Visit carolinenw.com or follow her on Instagram to keep up.