Kings Canyon

While camping at Uluru, we went on the Kings Canyon Rim Walk, which begins with 500 stairs straight up and ends with a thin walking area where you can look straight down to the canyon's bottom. What an amazing hike it was where we got to be at 30 metres up high.

Kings Canyon Formation:

Kings Canyon is a valley that cuts firstly through a layer of Mereenie Sandstone, deposited about 400 million years ago, now forming cliffs 30 metres high. Below the cliffs, the slope is less steep and the valley cuts through the softer Carmichael Sandstone, deposited about 440 million years ago (mya). Kings Canyon is a fractured sandstone plateau, eroded by wind, water and walkers.

Kings Canyon Ecosystem:

This Foothills Ecosystem is the only ecosystem of its kind protected by the National Park Service. Scattered at this lower elevation of approximately 1,500 feet and higher are foothills chaparral shrublands, oak woodlands and savannahs, yucca plants, grasslands as well as V-shaped river valleys and riparian vegetation.

Who Discovered it: John Muir

Born in 1838, Dunbar, United Kingdom

Died in 1914 Los Angeles, California, United States

Kings Canyon was preposed to become a national park by John Muir as early as 1891, but the park was not fully established until 1940. It holds the name of the river that in 1805 a Spanish explorer dubbed Rio de los Santos Reyes, or "river of the holy kings."

John Muir, also known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the National Parks", was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist, and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States of America.