A forest of records
After six hours and 530 kilometers of highway, we stop and eat at the Limper Liter Inn in Visalia, a hotel that preserves the charm of everything that has not been touched since the 70s . Historians say that the United States is a young country. It barely has a story. They should take a walk around here, among gigantic conifers with an estimated age between 1,800 and 2,700 years.
Sequoia National Park is reached from the city of Visalia on Highway 198. At the park gate we are not allowed access without tire chains. After fifteen minutes of climbing, you understand. Regardless of the season of the year in which you find yourself, when you climb the high mountains of this land of giants, you arrive at winter. At 1,900 m altitude it begins to snow. A luxury. Driving through a snowy redwood forest is a splendid experience, albeit the car begins to move like Tamara Rojo in the Royal Ballet in London.
When we get out to put the chains, just in front, on the steep slope where the width of the road ends, a bear walks. We greet each other cordially and continue on our way. We look for the General Sherman, the largest tree in the world with 84 meters high and a trunk circumference of 32 meters. Does it seem little to you? To hug him you would need 15 guys the size of Pau Gasol and place them lying down, stretched out on the base. His stamp is colossal. You feel comfortable around him.
But the General is not the only one, because this is a forest of records . Other sequoias such as Washington, President and Lincoln exceed 76 m in height and have trunks of 30 m. A New Yorker sighs next to me: “Oh, we are nothing” . The sandstorm in the desert and the fireworks of a city of nightclubs and casinos like Las Vegas have given way, in just a few hours, to the undeniable pleasure of walking on virgin snowflakes. To silence. To a landscape of bears and chlorophyll with the most majestic trees on Earth, the giant sequoias.
This report was published in issue 49 of the magazine Condé Nast Traveler.
In the shadow of General Sherman