|  More sequoias today. They are such an awesomely impressive
tree – especially for a monkey like me because there are no branches low down
to help me climb up. I reckon I’d suffer from vertigo if I climbed to the top
anyway. Here is Paddy and me standing in front of General Grant – it may not
look that big in the background, but it is actually the second biggest tree in
the world by volume – 81.5m high, and 8.8m in diameter. President Calvin
Coolidge proclaimed it the "Nation's Christmas Tree" on April 28,
1926.
 It’s a bit strange up there at the moment. They’ve had huge
forest fires which at one time had 3,000 firefighters working to control it, so
there are large blackened areas. As well as that there has been a drought for a
few years and lots of the trees are starting to die so large patches of brown
in the forests. And looking out across the Sierra Nevadas I ask myself “where
is the nevada?” Nevada means “snowfall” in Spanish for those of you that don’t
know. Reading about it find out that California’s mountains are at a 500-year
snow low, as California faces one of its most severe droughts in 100 years –
since this April the mountains have got only 5% of their historical average
from 1951 to 2000. Global warming or what?
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