The above pic is the Kaweah Beauty on the right and its small cadre of timber admirers all lined up in the foreground.

So here is a fun fact for you that I learned on this trip: Three bears playing sounds frighteningly like a few very big dogs attacking each other. That deep and angry growl/snarl from a large dog savaging something is almost indistinguishable from bear playing noises. If you hear it, it can momentarily make you wonder where exactly your life choices went wrong to place you exposed in the wild near that.

I say that because this trip in the East Fork Grove I wandered across a mama bear and her two yearling cubs coming in my direction on the trail. Luckily, I saw them first, and having spotted them, I did the sensible thing: I hid behind a two-foot-diameter log. As they were playing, batting each other around and making that fearsome din. I started wondering what I should do as they got closer. I didn't want them getting very near me before they discovered my presence, and I sure didn't want them playing or being startled when near me. Eventually I decided that I couldn't wait until they got close to me to make my presence known. So I stood up and tapped my walking stick and lightly stomped my feet to get their attention while they were still a couple hundred feet away from me. When they noticed my noise, all three of them did the prairie dog thing and stood up on their back legs and peered at me for an eternal-feeling thirty seconds. Finally they did what bears usually do when I meet them and turned to go back the other way, leaving me alone. Whew, it was a nervous moment just for a bit there.

Anyway, back to the sequoia studies. For a long time now I have been noticing from a distance three large-looking stark white sequoia skeletons high up in the East Fork Grove. As you drive up the Mineral King Road, you can see them from all the way across the valley on the opposite ridge, and I have often wondered if they are as large as they look from afar. My foray up into the grove this time was to see if I could get to those big defoliated snags and see how huge they once were, and also check out the nearby area to see if there were any still-living trees that were that exceptional. I did work my way up to them after two miles walking on a trail and then another couple of miles and about 1,200 feet climbing off trail. It was a good day's walk to get to them.

Two of the the three proved to not be quite large enough to be champions. They were about 13-14 feet dbh and likely about 10-11 feet in diameter through the majority of the lower/larger part of their boles, the section of the tree which accounts for the majority of the volume. Based on the size of the remainder of the heartwood that is left and a bit more for the bark that has fully sloughed off, I estimate the approximate original volume of those two at about 15k. The majority of the bones of the tree being still there, we can also estimate their former height quite well.

The lower tree of the three was likely the largest one and is now broken off at about 115 feet. It would have been larger than the other two when it had its original height. It was about 13 feet diameter without bark above its lower basal flare when it hit about 20 feet high;  and only narrowed down to about 11 feet diameter at 100 feet of height where it is currently broken off. With that kind of start, and if we project a probable height of something similar to the other two skeletons, it would have been a tree of nearly 25k in volume.

I also measured a couple of live trees on the way back down the ridge; however, they worked out to be approximately 11k and 12k respectively, not any bigger than I suspect the largest of the skeletons was before its untimely demise.

Irrespective of my tree volume numbers for the visit, I will say the animal-watching score was pretty good also. If my wife had been along keeping tabs on her type of score, that of counting animals, the three bears, half a dozen deer, and one bobcat would constitute a really good tally.


Below are some pics of the three skeleton trees using the telescopic on the camera for the first couple, and then up close on the third.

And here are some pics of the three bears that I saw. Cinnamon fur, with brown and black highlights.

Below are a pair of trees I also measured in East Fork that wont make the list, too small.  but nice nonetheless. One practically grown around a huge rock.