My son-in-law just recently discovered climbing and bouldering in the gym. My daughter and he invited my wife and me (and our younger daughter) to head to Sequoia N. P. for the day so he could sample some "real" bouldering (i.e outdoors on granite). I'm not certain whether the motivation for the invitation was to see whether 48 years of craft and cunning could outwit youth and excellent condition, or whether they knew that both my wife and I own Lifetime Passes (AKA Golden Turkeys), thus postponing when they need to buy their own Golden Eagles.

In any case, I left the ropes in their places at home

and loaded the trunk with a few pairs of climbing shoes, chalk, and a very large selection of goods intended to provided creature comforts.

Note that there are no pads in sight. 48 years of craft and cunning means we don't need no stinkin' pads.

When we got to our daughter's house (after the mandatory trip to Starbucks to slake the thirst of my wife and daughters), we encountered the dreaded bait and switch. My son-in-law, who grew up in Vermont, had never seen the General Sherman Tree, so he wanted to see it before we did anything else.

Well, Memorial Day weekend in a National Park being what it is, two hours later we found ourselves about 3/4 of a mile past Giant Forest, parked in a turnout, and trudging up the road toward the Giant Forest Museum, since there was no room in any parking lot within the last five miles. The grind to the Museum took much more out of me than anything I've done at the gym lately, but our target was hospitable, and not particularly mobbed.


A pleasant trial led from there, 2.5 miles to the General Sherman Tree. On our way, we passed a forest of unnamed, "average" Sequoias:



That's our younger (i.e. 27-year-old) daughter standing next to the tree for scale. Eleazarians are not tall, but that tree, just an ordinary Sequoia, was big!

When we finally reached the General Sherman Tree, we were greeted by hundreds of others, who scored proximate parking places, but somehow didn't diminish the awe of looking at the World's Bulkiest Living Thing. My daughters and son-in-law felt patriotic, despite hearing the comment by a child telling his father "I heard that General Sherman was a bad man!" Then again, I read in a book entitled How to speak Southern that "hail" is where General Sherman went for what he did to Etlanta [sic].


Just remember, these three are teaching your children. The two on the left (our older daughter and son-in-law) are tenured high school math and statistics teachers. Our younger daughter (on the right) has a master's in music composition, but is substitute teaching while she beefs up her composition portfolio for Ph.D. program admission.

On the way back, we even came across an adolescent bear eating real bear food, who seemed rather unconcerned about our presence:


By the time we got back to the cars, the desire to boulder had left us, as we needed to be home this evening for various obligations that are hard to explain, since they don't involve climbing. Nonetheless, I feel like we had a worthwhile day, even if we didn't get off the ground.

John