page_title: Kings Canyon National Park
section_title: Mountains and valleys
hierarchical_section_title: Kings Canyon National Park / Geography and natural history / Mountains and valleys
caption_attribution_description: North face of Mount Agassiz (center), Palisades, Sierra Nevada. Taken from Cloudripper.
context_page_description: Kings Canyon National Park is an American national park in the southern Sierra Nevada, in Fresno and Tulare Counties, California. Originally established in 1890 as General Grant National Park, the park was greatly expanded and renamed to Kings Canyon National Park on March 4, 1940. The park's namesake, Kings Canyon, is a rugged glacier-carved valley more than a mile deep. Other natural features include multiple 14,000-foot peaks, high mountain meadows, swift-flowing rivers, and some of the world's largest stands of giant sequoia trees. Kings Canyon is north of and contiguous with Sequoia National Park, and both parks are jointly administered by the National Park Service as the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
  The majority of the 461,901-acre park, drained by the Middle and South Forks of the Kings River and many smaller streams, is designated wilderness. Tourist facilities are concentrated in two areas: Grant Grove, home to General Grant and Cedar Grove, located in the heart of Kings Canyon. Overnight hiking is required to access most of the park's backcountry, or high country, which for much of the year is covered in deep snow.
context_section_description: Kings Canyon is characterized by some of the steepest vertical relief in North America, with numerous peaks over 14,000 feet (4,300 m) on the Sierra Crest along the park's eastern border, falling to 4,500 feet (1,400 m) in the valley floor of Cedar Grove just ten miles (16 km) to the west.  The Sierran crest forms the eastern boundary of the park, from Mount Goethe in the north, down to Junction Peak, at the boundary with Sequoia National Park. Several passes cross the crest into the park, including Bishop Pass, Taboose Pass, Sawmill Pass, and Kearsarge Pass. All of these passes are above 11,000 feet (3,400 m) in elevation.
  There are several prominent subranges of the Sierra within and around the park. The Palisades, along the park's eastern boundary, have four peaks over 14,000 feet (4,300 m) including the highest point in the park,  14,248 feet (4,343 m) NAVD 88 at the summit of North Palisade. The Great Western Divide extends through the south-central part of the park and also has many peaks over 13,000 feet (4,000 m), including Mount Brewer. The Monarch Divide, stretching between the lower Middle and South Forks of the Kings, has some of the most inaccessible terrain in the entire park. In the northwest section of the park are other very steep and rugged ranges such as the Goddard Divide, LeConte Divide and Black Divide, all of which are dotted with high mountain lakes and separated by deep chasms.
  Most of the mountains and canyons, as in other parts of the Sierra Nevada, are formed in igneous intrusive rocks such as granite, diorite and monzonite, formed at least 100 million years ago due to subduction along the North American–Pacific Plate boundary. However, the Sierra itself is a young mountain range, no more than 10 million years old. Huge tectonic forces along the western edge of the Great Basin forced the local crustal block to tilt and uplift, creating the mountains' gradual slope to the west and the nearly vertical escarpment to the east bordering the Owens Valley. Many cave systems are also formed in the rock layers, including Boyden Cave along the South Fork of the Kings River.
caption: Mount Agassiz is located on the Sierra Crest along the eastern edge of the park.
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