Kings Canyon National Park

But when he'd arrived, Sam was nowhere.

By 6:00 that Saturday night, roughly 200 law enforcement officers and search and rescue volunteers from Crater Lake National Park, Mount Rainier National Park, and Kings Canyon National Park came together to start looking for Sam.

According to an article by Strange Outdoors, in the days leading up to their hike together, Ken and Sam were staying with a few of Ken's family members in a cabin about 45 minutes north of the park, near another body of water called Diamond Lake.

Investigators highly doubted that Sam had taken off and would have been able to find his way back to where he and his dad were staying.

Before we get into the story of the actual disappearance and the search effort, I want to give you guys some background on the town of Mammoth Lakes.

So Mammoth Lakes is smack between Yosemite, Sierra National Forest, Igneo National Forest, and has Kings Canyon National Park to the south.

So this is a hotbed of national parks, and I want to point out to everybody that the Sierra Nevadas are a very, very common missing 411 cluster.

Really? Yes.

I love to travel, not only to see the sights and experience cultures that are different from mine, which I feel is more important now than it ever has been, my word, but to try the local beer offerings as well.

You've all heard me drone on about my local faves, which speaking of, if you're ever cruising through Fresno, maybe on your way from Northern California to Southern California, or you're heading to Yosemite, Kings Canyon National Park, all of the beautiful things around where I live, you have got to make a stop at Crow and Wolf and House of Pendragon.

They're my favorite local breweries.

We've got some other great ones as well.

Twenty twenty-one, me and my dad did Sequoia.

Did we, did we do Sequoia? We did Kings Canyon, which I believe is right next to Sequoia, up like northeast of Fresno.

We stayed in Fresno, and then we drove up there, did that.

We did San Diego, Petco Park, the Padres.

It's a loop.

So you start and end at Rhodes End in Kings Canyon.

Oh, yeah.

That's the start of the Sierra High Route as well, by the way.

Welcome to Big Blend Radio's California Sequoia Country Show, home to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, Giant Sequoia National Monument and Sequoia National Forest, and the charming historic agricultural communities that make up Tulare County.

So

welcome, everyone.

Like we've got Porterville, Tulare, Lindsay, Woodlake, Visalia, Three Rivers, Exeter.

There's so many different communities to explore.

And then of course there's Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

Giant Sequoia National Monument and also Sequoia National Forest.

And all those four main park entities are all connected.

The National Park Service reported that he was not carrying any overnight gear.

Also, according to the National Park Service, Quang was last seen on Sunday, August 21, 2022, between 3 and 4 p.m. near the peak of Split Mountain, close to the boundary of Kings Canyon National Park and Inyo National Forest.

At an altitude of 13,200 feet, one party member had waited 60 to 90 minutes for Quang and the other members to return.

Quang had indicated that he would either fall behind, wait for them there, or head down, but the Inyo County Sheriff's Office said no specific plan was made.

Despite extensive efforts spanning over ten days, Kwong's whereabouts remain unknown and the search was placed in limited continuous mode.

Kwong's itinerary was highly challenging and few other hikers were in the area when he went missing.

The National Park Service said that simultaneous searches were led by Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and the Inyo County Sheriff's Department, with the assistance of Inyo National Forest, Inyo County Search and Rescue, California National Guard, Sierra Madre Search and Rescue, the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center, Tulare County and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Departments, Yosemite, Death Valley and Pinnacles National Parks, the Civil Air Patrol, California Governor's Office of Emergency Management, and California Highway Patrol Inland Division Air Ops.

Anyone hiking in the area at the time of Quong's disappearance with relevant information is asked to please contact the Inyo County Sheriff's Dispatch at 760-878-0383, option 4.

Didn't make a whole lot of sense, right? So during the 20s and 30s, they improved the roads.

Conservationists also pursued protection against or for much larger Kings Canyon landscape that was around there.

And they decided, you know what, let's just go ahead and create this thing called the Kings Canyon National Park in 1940.

And that completely surrounded and absorbed...

Yeah.

Grant National Park and kind of and still, I mean, Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon sit right beside.

They

do.