Looking up at tall trees
California,  Monday walks,  Sunday Stills,  Trees, forests and woodland

Walking among giants

November 25, 2024 / 64 Comments

The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It’s not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

No, it isn’t possible to successfully photograph a redwood tree, nor to convey its impact; you have to experience it for yourself. Walking among these groves is unlike any other forest walk. More than by any other trees, we are dwarfed by them, and awed by a palpable sense of their great age. That age, that immense size, their sheer presence; only by being there can we feel those qualities.

None of these truths, however, prevented me from attempting to capture these giants of the tree world as we walked among them.

There are two types of redwood tree to be found in California, each as majestic as the other. The Giant Sequoias are the most massive trees in the world, measured by a combination of height and width. I will return to them in a later post. Today it is all about the Coastal Redwoods which, although not as massive overall, are the tallest trees to be found anywhere in the world. The tallest among them stands at 380 feet, as high as a 37-storey building. Their trunks can grow more than 27 feet wide, about eight paces for an average adult! And hard to fathom, but these trees can live for more than 2,000 years. Some Coastal Redwoods living today were alive during the time of the Roman Empire.

Sprig of green tree needles on a bed of brown ones
Coastal Redwood needles in Gould Grove

These majestic trees once grew the length of the California coast from south of Big Sur to just over the Oregon border. But logging during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries decimated them. Today only five percent of the original old-growth Coastal Redwood forests remain, along a 450-mile strip, and much of it now young. The largest surviving stands of ancient coast redwoods are found in several protected areas, including the Humboldt Redwoods State Park. That is where I want to take you today, for a couple of Monday Walks.

The Avenue of the Giants

You could travel south to north (or north to south of course) through this part of California along Highway 101. It is scenic enough and a good, fast road. But to get close to the trees it’s better by far to detour off the main road and follow State Road 254, the Avenue of the Giants. This skirts the western edge of Humboldt Redwoods State Park and had numerous stopping places where you can get out of the car and walk among these titans. We did two of the shorter trails, each allowing us to get close to and really appreciate their grandeur.

Gould Grove

This trail near the Visitor Center took us on a loop through a redwood grove which features 300-foot trees, evidence of early logging. I found myself taking lots of photos of the awe-inspiring trees, even though I knew one would look pretty much like the other. It’s almost impossible to convey their size in a photograph, but I asked Chris to pose in some of my shots to try to give a sense of scale. See if you can spot him in the gallery below!

Forest of tall trees
Looking up at a very tall tree
Tall trees
Forest with large fallen tree and man crouching by it
Forest with a fallen tree
Small river in a forest

At the furthest point from the road the trail has a path leading down to a river, the South Fork of the Eel River, which you can see in the bottom right shot.

Founders Grove

This grove is named for the founders of the Save the Redwoods league, formed in 1917 by a group of men to preserve at least some areas of primeval forests. They purchased their first grove here in 1921.

Again, you might be able to spot Chris in the gallery below!

Tall tree with hollow base and man waving
Ferns growing from a fallen tree
Forest with fallen trees
Fallen tree in a forest

The Founders Tree itself is one of the tallest of the Coastal Redwoods, possibly the tallest. I say possibly because I have seen some contradictory descriptions online. The National Park website describes it as being:

364 feet in height and 15 feet in diameter at the base. It is commonly referred to as the “world’s tallest known standing tree”.

But a sign in front of it on this trail told us it was ‘just’ 346.1 feet high and 12.7 feet in diameter. Meanwhile Wikipedia lists several trees (all Coastal Redwoods) taller than this, as does the Monumental Trees website. However the latter goes on to say that the tallest trees, discovered only in 2006, grow in a remote area that is not easily accessible and has not been disclosed. I guess that means that this Founders Tree is the tallest tree any of us is ever likely to see! Of course it’s impossible to show the scale in a photo, or even fit the whole tree in, but I tried.

Sign with measurements of a tree
Looking up at a very tall tree

While there are many beautiful green shades here, there is also plenty of brown, so I’m linking to Terri’s Sunday Stills colour challenge for November.

I visited Humboldt Redwoods State Park in September 2024 – see our full road trip itinerary here

64 Comments

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