page_title: Kings Canyon National Park
section_title: Glacial features
hierarchical_section_title: Kings Canyon National Park / Geography and natural history / Glacial features
caption_attribution_description: English: A body of water in the Bishop Pass area of Dusy Basin within Kings Canyon National Park.
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: The present shape of the high country was largely sculpted by glaciations during successive Ice Ages over the last 2.5 million years. Large valley glaciers moved as far as 44 miles (71 km) down the South and Middle Forks of the Kings River, carving out the distinctive deep U-shaped valleys at Cedar Grove and Paradise Valley on the South Fork, and Tehipite Valley on the Middle Fork. Ice Age glaciations did not extend all the way to the confluence of the Middle and South Forks; consequently, the canyons downstream of Cedar Grove and Tehipite are typical V-shaped river gorges, in contrast to the U-shaped valleys upstream.
  The glacial valleys are characterized by flat floors and exposed granite cliffs and domes many thousands of feet high, similar in form to the more famous Yosemite Valley to the north, and in fact the term "yosemite" was used in the 19th century by John Muir to describe these valleys before they were widely known by their own names. In A Rival of the Yosemite, published in 1891 in The Century Illustrated Magazine, John Muir wrote of Kings Canyon:
  In the vast Sierra wilderness far to the southward of the famous Yosemite Valley, there is a yet grander valley of the same kind. It is situated on the south fork of the Kings River, above the most extensive groves and forests of the giant sequoia, and beneath the shadows of the highest mountains in the range, where the cañons are deepest and the snow-laden peaks are crowded most closely together. It is called the Big King's River Cañon, or King's River Yosemite ... The stupendous rocks of purplish gray granite that form the walls are from 2500 to 5000 feet in height, while the depth of the valley is considerably more than a mile.
  The bottom of the valley ... is diversified with flowery meadows and groves and open sunny flats, through the midst of which the crystal river, ever changing, ever beautiful, makes its way; now gliding softly with scarce a ripple over beds of brown pebbles, now rustling and leaping in wild exultation across avalanche rock-dams or terminal moraines ... From this long, flowery, forested, well-watered park the walls rise abruptly in plain precipices or richly sculptured masses partly separated by side cañons baring wonderful wealth and variety of architectural forms.
  
  From the brink of the walls on either side the ground still rises in a series of ice-carved ridges and basins, superbly forested and adorned with many small lakes and meadows where deer and bear find grateful homes; while from the head of the valley other mountains rise beyond in glorious array, every one of them shining with rock crystals and snow, and with a network of streams that sing their way down from lake to lake through a labyrinth of ice-burnished cañons.
  Other significant glacial features include Tehipite Dome, the largest granite dome in the Sierra, rising 3,500 feet (1,100 m) above the floor of Tehipite Valley. In Kings Canyon and across the high country, such sheer granite cliffs are subject to exfoliation, frost weathering and earthquakes which cause sudden and dramatic rockfalls. Over thousands of years, cliff collapses have built up large talus piles or scree slopes at their bases along almost every glacial valley in the park.
  Zumwalt Meadow, one of the few large areas of flat land in the park, was formed by the accumulation of sediment behind the terminal moraine of a retreating glacier. In Kings Canyon there are in fact four such moraines, which the Kings River cascades over, forming whitewater rapids, in an area where it otherwise winds calmly across meadows. The series of moraines one behind the other are termed "nested moraines", each created during a different glacial period by glaciers of varying length.
  Elsewhere in the high country, the landscape of bare rock and talus left by former glaciers is replete with hanging valleys, waterfalls, serrated ridges (arêtes), cirques, and hundreds of alpine tarns. Some of the highest peaks retain permanent snowfields and even glaciers. Palisade Glacier, the largest in the Sierra, is located near the park's edge in t
caption: Dusy Basin includes many small lakes, such as this one, carved by glaciers from granite.
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