Where to See the Tallest Trees in the World

[Carmen Elsa Irarragorri Wyland]

Where to See the Tallest Trees in the World

Have you ever been to a new place where you feel lost and in awe? Visiting Redwood National Park in Northern California is an opportunity to be among trees that existed during the time of Christ. Redwood National Park is known worldwide as the home of the tallest trees in the world, and it attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors yearly. The park is open to tourists year-round, and entrance is free. A visit to the park convinces you that the reserve offers more than trees. Find out what makes Redwood National Park a unique place and how to make your stay memorable.

About Redwood National Park

Located along the Northern California coast, Redwood became a national park in October 1968. The park sits on 131,983 acres of land with about 5,939 acres under water. Redwood is home to the tallest trees on Earth, with average heights of 300 feet. And you don't get that tall in a short period of time: The average age of the redwood trees is between 500-700 years, with a few documented to be 2,000 years old. The park has about 380 different campsites and four campgrounds available for tourists, with three of the four campgrounds open all year.

Famous for its redwood trees, Redwood National Park also has Sitka Spruce trees, salmonberries, and the red alders that line the entire coastal region. The redwood trees do not cover the entire coastal area because of its intolerance to the drying effect of the coastal salt. This gives way to the Sitka Spruce trees lining most of the coastal areas. The national park is the home to over 40 different mammals and over 400 bird species. Redwood Park has many beaches and numerous trails that provide visitors with lots of opportunities for outdoor adventures.

How to Get to Redwood National Park

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If traveling by air, the nearest large airports to Redwood National Park are in Sacramento and San Francisco. You can connect a flight to any of the adjacent cities of Santa Rosa, McKinleyville, or Crescent City.

Traveling by road remains the loveliest way to get to the Redwood National Park. If you are coming from either the north or south, follow U.S. Highway 101. If driving from the northeast, enter on U.S. Highway 199.

Top Attraction Sites and Outdoor Activities

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This park is home to the largest living coastal redwood tree, which stands 379.1 feet and was discovered in August 2006. Named the Hyperion

Hyperion, the world's tallest living tree

The tallest tree in the world is a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), named Hyperion after a person in Greek mythology. The tree is no less than 115.72 m (379.7 feet) tall! This enormous tree was discovered only in August 2006 in a remote part of Redwood National Park, California by naturalists Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor. Their first preliminary measurements were done with professional laser measurement equipment based on goniometry.
In September 2006 the tree was remeasured by Steve Sillett. This was done in the most accurate way: he climbed to the top of the tree to drop a tape from there straight to the ground. This tape drop was filmed for National Geographic.

In July 2006 some other record tall trees were discovered: "Helios" (named after the Greek God of the sun), the world's tallest known tree as of June 2006 (114.09 m), "Icarus" (113.14 m), and "Daedalus" (110.76 m).

  

The get an impression of the size of coast redwoods: the images above show some of the largest of these trees. These wide trunked trees are not necessarily the tallest, as these are usually have a more slender silhouette.
On the left is the "Del Norte Titan" in the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, California (© Robert Van Pelt). Notice the people in the left bottom corner. The tree on the right is called "Screaming Titans", also in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park.

The discoveries of 2006 are remarkable: these trees appeared to grow on slopes and not in the center of the valleys where water is most abundant, and where all the previous contenders to the title "tallest living tree in the world" grow. This means that it's not unlikely that there are even taller, not as such discovered trees out there, simply because people weren't looking for them there. Now the forested slopes are being sought trough by tall tree hunters Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor. It's on a location like that that in August 2006 the current tallest (known as such) tree of 115.72 m (379.7 feet) m was found 
In 2007 Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor had already scanned most of these new, unexpected locations. They think it's very unlikely a taller tree than Hyperion will be found, but you never know.

Hyperion has been quite lucky: only a few hundred feet from the base is the edge of a clearcut from the seventies. Clearcutting is a forestry practice in which all trees in an area are logged and the entire area is devastated. About two weeks before also Hyperion would have been attacked by the chain saws, this valley was added to the Redwood National Park during the Carter administration. Logging companies feared this would happen and worked 24/7 in the broad redwood valleys and kept logging old growth forests that were there long before men were ever entered these valleys. 
In the seventies only an alarming 15% of the rich redwood forests remained, nowadays only 4% still exists and even today, as you read this, old growth Californian forests are being logged (more).

According to redwood standards, Hyperion is quite young and still growing vigorously. Sillett thinks the tree might be "only" 600 years old, which is about 20 years in human time

Until July 2006 the tallest known Sequoia sempervirens was "The Stratosphere Giant" (image on the right). This tall tree measures 112.83 m (measured in 2004, Steve Sillett) en was only discovered in August 2000 (by Chris Atkins) in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, California, where a lot of these giants grow. It is very difficult to appreciate the majestic height of these trees from a photo. The image on the left gives a little bit a sense of scale: on the right you can see a person hanging on a climbing rope (click to view a larger version).

Just as is the case with other giants, like the "The Federation Giant" (112 m), the exact location is kept secret by the park rangers to avoid a tourist stampede to the tree. This could unbalance the fragile ecosystem of the forest and could harm the tree directly: in the past things already went wrong for tall trees that became too popular (see below).

In case you don't have a clue about how tall 115.72 m (379.7 feet) is: the height of Big Ben in London is 96.3 m (316 feet), that of the statue of Liberty is 46.5 + 46.9 m (151 + 154 feet), so both tall constructions are largely lower than these trees.

Note that although the tallest living tree in the world is a coast redwood, the biggest living tree on the planet is a specimen of a related species, the giant sequoia. The largest giant sequoia is named "General Sherman".

More about the

biggest trees in the world

tallest trees in the world

• stoutest or thickest trees in the world
• oldest trees in the world

• Tallest redwood ever?

  It is absolutely uncertain if the tallest as such known Sequoia sempervirens is really the tallest Sequoia or the tallest Sequoia that grew in historical times. Indeed, it is very possible that in the logged parts of the original redwood forests (96%) there were taller specimens, who fell victim to the ever hungry chain saws.
  

  Other species that can grow very tall are other conifers who also grow naturally on the northwestern coast of North America. Comes in second place: the Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) with 100.3 m (329 feet), followed by the Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), of which the tallest known specimen is 96,7 m (317,3 feet) tall. Just as the wood of coast redwoods, the wood of these trees is of excellent quality, so the once vast forests of these trees are almost completely gone. Without any doubt there were taller specimens in there. For example, in 1900 a Douglas-fir of 125.5 m (411.7 feet) was logged.

  The thickest, tallest, and oldest coast redwoods worldwide 
  The thickest, tallest, and oldest trees in general worldwide 

  Tallest tree ever measured

  The tallest tree ever measured was not a Sequoia sempervirens, but a type of eucalypt (Eucalyptus), an Australian hardwood tree (images). 
  In 1872 forester William Ferguson spotted an extremely tall mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) near the Watts River, Victoria, Australia. Purportedly he was 132.6 m (435 feet) tall. Around that time, multiple specimens of 140 m tall were reported in Victoria, mainland Australia.

  We cannot check these measurements anymore: all these trees have been logged... Mountain ash was and is an important construction material in Australia.

      

  Some reserve about these old measurements should be kept. The tallest mountain ash of which the heigth was measured with some certainty was 114.3 m tall and was also logged (1884).

  Even nowadays the deforestation in mainland Australia and Tasmania is continuing. The relationship between environmental organizations and the state company Tasmania Forestry are tense, especially since they burned the biggest Australian tree "El Grande", although it was an accident according to Tasmania Forestry.

  The tallest living eucalypts can be found in Tasmania. The tallest one, named "Centurion", is now around 100 m (328 ft) tall and is the tallest living hardwood tree on earth. This eucalypt tree was only discovered in October 2008 by using a laser mounted on a plane, that was measuring the terrain height, forest height and forest biomass.

  On the image on the right you can see the previous contender to that title, named "Icarus Dream". This tree has a height of 97 m (318.2 feet).

• However, 
  

  Tāne Mahuta, also called Lord of the Forest, he reduced visitors to tears ..he is a giant kauri tree (Agathis australis) in the Waipoua Forest of Northland Region, New Zealand. Its age is unknown but is estimated to be between 1,250 and 2,500 years. It is the largest kauri known to stand today.

  Height: 45.2 m (148 ft)
  Girth: 15.44 m (50.7 ft)
  

[Carmen Elsa Irarragorri Wyland]

Some images of some of the widest sequoias