Coast Redwoods, California

Coast Redwoods: The Location of Hyperion Is Secret for a Good Reason

The tallest known living tree on earth, a coast redwood called Hyperion at 115.7 metres, was discovered in 2006 somewhere in Redwood National and State Parks in Humboldt County, California. The National Park Service has declined to publish the exact location. This is not bureaucratic withholding but a conservation decision: the previous tallest-known tree was damaged by people trampling to reach it and leaving unofficial trails that caused root compaction and erosion. Hyperion’s undisclosed location is the best evidence that the NPS learned from that mistake. If you are considering using internet resources to find the coordinates and hike to it, you’re part of the problem those resources were created to describe.

The coast redwoods themselves don’t require navigation to any specific tree. Walking into old-growth redwood forest in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park or Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, where the trees are 2,000 years old and over 90 metres tall, produces the scale effect that photographs consistently fail to convey. The canopy is so high that looking up produces genuine disorientation. The light through it is unlike anything else.

Where to Visit

The redwood parks stretch along California’s north coast from roughly 400km north of San Francisco to the Oregon border. The main concentrations:

Humboldt Redwoods State Park (Humboldt County): contains the Avenue of the Giants, a 51km alternative to Highway 101 running through old-growth stands. Pull off anywhere and walk in 100 metres. The Rockefeller Forest, reached via a short trail from the Mattole Road, is the largest contiguous old-growth redwood forest on earth.

Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park (Del Norte County): Fern Canyon, a narrow gorge with walls entirely covered in five-fingered ferns, is one of the most photographed locations in the state. The Roosevelt Elk herd grazes in the Prairie Creek meadow near the visitor centre year-round.

Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park (near Crescent City): the Stout Memorial Grove is where you go if you want to stand among trees with almost no other visitors present. The grove is on the Smith River, accessible via a dirt road. The swimming in the Smith River on hot summer days is excellent.

Muir Woods (Marin County, 18km from San Francisco): the accessible option for visitors based in the Bay Area. Requires advance reservations for the shuttle or the car park (recreation.gov, $8-9 parking fee). The old-growth is genuinely impressive despite the proximity to a major metropolitan area.

Getting There

US-101 runs through or near most of the main redwood parks from San Francisco north. The drive from San Francisco to the northern parks takes 4-5 hours. There is no practical public transit to the northern parks; a rental car is required for everything except Muir Woods (served by seasonal shuttles from Sausalito).

Where to Stay

Eureka (Humboldt County) has motels and guesthouses from $80-150. Crescent City (Del Norte County, nearest town to Jedediah Smith) has comparable options. Both are functional rather than charming. Camping in the parks is the better option: reserveamerica.com for state park reservations. Several campgrounds sit directly in old-growth forest; the Jedediah Smith campground on the Smith River is one of the best-positioned campgrounds in California.