Calaveras Big Trees State Park

Over the long weekend, I did something that I have never done before: I drove to the Sierras in the winter to hike in the snow! I am from Louisiana originally, and I moved to California in 2005 where I lived first in the Davis-Sacramento area and then in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. I have never had to deal with driving in the snow, and the idea of taking a winding mountain road in icy conditions just terrified me. But I have been hankering to see the sequoias for a while now, and so I planned and I waited until just the right conditions to visit Calaveras Big Trees State Park. Boy, am I glad that I that I went for it; it was MAGICAL. 

Click "read more" to see more photos after the jump. It was insanely beautiful. ​

There are two groves of sequoias in the park, but the North Grove is the only one that you can drive to in the winter. I tried to get to the Scenic Overlook along the River Trail, but I would have had to risk crossing on a log bridge over a very full creek of snow melt, and that didn't seem wise. So I just stuck to the 1.6-mile nature trail, the North Grove Big Trees Trail loop. It was amazing! I guess because it was in mid-winter, the park was empty, and it was so peaceful.

Per the State Park's brochure on the trees:

These massive [trees], which can reach a height of 325 feet and a diameter of 33 feet, are descended from trees that were standing when dinosaurs roamed Earth and birds, mammals, and flowering plants began to appear. Some of today’s trees are thought to be as old as 2,000 years.

It is truly impressive to see these giants mixed in with ponderosa pines, sugar pines, incense cedars, and white fir. You can see that they are related to redwoods because the red brown of their bark just pops against the other trees, especially in the snow. The largest tree in the world by volume is a Sequoia tree, the General Sherman in Sequoia National Park further south along the Sierras. Although the trees in Calaveras are not as big as the General Sherman, you can definitely get an appreciation for this amazing species of tree on this walk. 

This park is about a two-hour drive from where I live (Livermore), and it's a three-hour drive from the SF peninsula. There is an excellent write-up about the park here, along with suggestions for restaurants along the way and pictures of the famed Pioneer Tree, a walk-thru tree that fell in winter storms of 2017. There was so much to see that I feel like I have only scratched the surface, and I can't wait to head back again. For example, there were many places to go wine tasting along Highway 4 as well as Mercer Caverns and Columbia State Historic Park in addition to all of the other sights in the park itself.