Trails & Trees - Part 21 - Redwood National and State Parks

Saturday, 26 August 2017

Although we hiked for seven miles, this trail was all about the trees.

We started at “Big Tree” in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park (see previous post) and started following the Foothill Trail. It’s not all about redwoods. This trail was canopied with maples that were reminiscent of live oaks in the south.

But mostly it is about the redwoods -- the tallest trees in the world. After about a mile, the Foothill Trail meets the Cathedral Trees Trail where the big trees begin. In the photo above, I stand at the cross-section of a relatively recent windfall where a log section was cut out to clear the trail.

Clearly this is a big tree, but you begin to get an idea of the size when you realize that the blue arrow points to Lon. He’s standing near the cut-apart log in the previous photo. This is one of the few places where you can actually see a whole tree from far enough back to get it in one photo.

"Cathedral trees” are sets of trees that sprouted from the roots around the stump of a dead redwood.

Looking up into the canopy between two sets of cathedral trees.

Six-inch long and neon-yellow, banana slugs were common on the forest floor.

We left the Cathedral Trees Trail and walked two miles up (900 ft climb) dusty, single-lane Cal Barrel Road to the Rhododendron Trail trailhead.

Along the way we saw a number of hollow trees with “doors” and “windows” in them.

We then hiked back down the Rhododendron Trail. The main attraction of this trail was two “trail-thru” trees where the trail literally goes through live redwoods. This is the first one. The opening is about 6 feet high.

The second “trail-thru” tree. Like the other hollow trees, this one has been hollowed out by fire. While the fire consumed the heartwood, the growing layer (cambium) remained intact and the tree is alive and continuing to grow.

The Rhododendron Trail gave us insight into how difficult it would be to traverse these woods without using an established trail. The trail had to go around numerous large downed trees, with rootballs 20 feet high, trunks 10 feet in diameter, and logs 300 feet long. A couple of times what appeared to be a rock wall with a cave in it was really a downed log, as in the photo above where the trail winds underneath one downed tree and between two others.

The real pleasure of the Rhododendron Trail was solitude. On the two-and-a-half mile return to the Cathedral Trees Trail we did not encounter a single hiker. Once we were back on Cathedral Trees Trail to return to the “Big Tree”, the trail was once again filled with hikers.