<\/a>Spanish broom: one of many blooms in Sequoia National Park’s lengthy Spring. (NPS)<\/p><\/div>\n
In the case of the High Sierra, the first flowering plants can appear as early as January in the lowest foothills that rise from California\u2019s flat Central Valley. At Sequoia National Park\u2019s middle elevations (4,000 to 7,000 feet), where the mighty sequoias thrive, spring flowers begin to bedeck the meadows in April. On higher slopes, hikers will notice the more obvious signs of spring\u2014tender grasses and wildflowers\u2014in June and July. In the very highest alpine ecosystems, spring comes very late\u2014August, even September. Spring and summer are greatly compressed at such high elevation. Spring comes and goes in a matter of weeks.<\/p>\n
In Sequoia National Park, you can drive to a 7,500-foot trailhead, gaining more than 6,000 feet and losing nearly twenty degrees F. in temperature. You can then hit the trail for the 14,494-foot top of Mt. Whitney, losing another twenty degrees F. or so as you climb to the top of the highest peak in the continental U.S. Hikers pass a lot of \u201cSpring\u201d as they make one of America\u2019s most classic climbs.<\/p>\n
Flowering plants are not the only life forms following spring uphill. Bears emerge from hibernation, foraging at ever higher altitude to sniff out their vegetal preferences. Birds and bees and many more creatures thrive in spring, whenever and wherever they find the season.<\/p>\n
So, if you want to prolong spring, hike higher and higher into the high country. Pause along the trail to admire the wide variety of flowering plants that adorn different elevations.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spring is the exact same length as other seasons. But wherever you live, and wherever you hike, spring is the one season that everyone agrees…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9448,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5998"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetrailmaster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}