mdvaden

Meant to post this one yesterday. A father and son I met a couple of years ago, who came to the area for a nearby music festival. This redwood is like 1 minute off the Avenue of the Giants, a few minutes stroll from Founders Grove. One of the nicest things you will notice by heading up to Avenue of the Giants or Prairie Creek in March ... hardly anybody is there. Its mind-boggling that so few people are in the parks with the tallest and biggest coast redwoods that time of year. The few hours between those parks and San Francisco south, and Portland, Oregon, north, make all the difference to eliminate crowds. One of the most peaceful places.

This time around, I wouldn't really push the idea your way of going up to Crescent City. because you can pretty much get awed in Avenue of the Giants, and Prairie Creek if that one fits. Prairie Creek is basically only 1.5 hours north of Avenue of the Giants ... next to nothing in terms of Hy. 101 drives. With the help of several PMs or emails, I can probably help you experience more in Prairie Creek, than Avenue of the Giants. If you decide to swing one night at a motel near the redwoods, consider staying in Arcata or Klamath, and definitely not Orick. Knowing what I do now of that area, if I were coming into the country, and starting from San Francisco, I'd get up between 3am and 5am in the morning, and head for Avenue of the Giants, arriving like 8am. Then after like 4 hours there, I'd head north, picking up food to go from Eureka, and get into Prairie Creek around 2pm. I'd explore there until around dark at 6pm. Then go north on 101 about 10 minutes and stay at the Ravenwood Motel or Motel Trees in Klamath, for about $65 to $75 US. Then, next morning, head back to Prairie Creek and explore as much as seemed reasonable, then scram back to San Fran like late afternoon or early evening. Whatever order you pick, I can provided a few hints and directions so you can get the best parts of the best trails within your time allotment. Here's one tree oddity from Prairie Creek, about a 2 minute walk from a turnout along the road parkway.

Here's Michael Taylor (The Wild Trees) exploring in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, looking for potential world record Douglas fir in a mixed species part of the redwood forest. Photo where he's centered between redwoods: 5th attachment. Also, I added two shots of Andrew Joslin, the Illustrator for the book. Just met him for the first time this year, and did a little bushwhacking together, also at Prairie Creek. His wife too, who is in the shot of the huge cathedral tree. Prairie Creek is more or less the Gemstone of all the redwood parks.

Muir Woods is okay, but it's a bit more like a city park experience. Here's a shot from Avenue of the Giants area. And another from near Crescent City that Gerald Beranek took of me, though that may be too far north for this visit. But Myers Flat is a short drive.

Don't think a bus is the way to go. Rent a car and drive. Besides, if you decide to try Avenue of the Giants, the bus won't take you to a few places I can give you directions too that are worth checking out. It's all in close proximity. Even though it's only 20 feet tall, you may find an albino redwood worth seeing. I'd need to PM the directions for that one. There are lots of good maps. And it's pretty easy to figure out. So you can take care of your own navigation, at least in Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

Maybe I can offer a few tips. But if this is your first time to see the redwoods, and if you are not sure you are coming back, invest a small sacrifice of getting up very early in the morning and driving north for a few hours. Get up at 4am, and be at Avenue of the Giants by 8am. Explore all day and drive back, or stay overnight in like Fortuna or Garberville or Myers Flat, and then come back the next day. Yosemite, or the Giant Sequoia stands around the Sierra Nevada may have enough snow to interfere as late as May. But the coast redwoods work all year, even if it's raining. Hiking is still fine with rain gear, or using an umbrella. The really big coast redwoods and tall ones are pretty much from Avenue of the Giants near Myers Flat, California, and then around Klamath and Crescent City. Muir Woods has no redwoods over 260 feet. Even the world record pines we found in Oregon last January are taller than any Muir Woods redwood. But Avenue of the Giants has 300 to 360 foot redwood trees.

FWIW ... Taylor, Atkins and myself all have the scope with cross-hairs. And I think Prof. Sillett out of Humboldt State University does likewise. When I ordered the unit, the representative mentioned that more people order the red dot scopes, when I mentioned the cross-hair option. But I think it's forestry folks who are getting the red dot scope. And I'm not sure why they prefer the red dot even for horizontal shooting, because we generally don't have much problem centering a cross-hair in dense shade. Just checked out the display illumination a few nights ago. This is how it lights up in darker areas. This was in my office with the lights turned way down. The photo was degraded in the attachment process. It's more clear to read than the image shows.

Just ordered a Laser Tech Impulse 200LR for the holiday season. This tool should last for 20 years or more. I will use it for exploring and measuring tree discoveries. But this will also get put to use for landscape work too. If I go out to do estimate / consultations for like drainage, the Trupulse unit will let me know right away whether the ground slopes at all or how much slope there is, regarding where to put drain pipe. For landscape design, I will be able to take several measurements with it rather than rolling a wheel or stretching a tape. For people using cranes, this would let workers and operators know how far away a load is dangling, using the HD function. For most tree workers and arborists, I think that the Trupulse 200 at 25% the cost, would suffice for the same, except like the landscape measurements or grade.

Merry Christmas. We've more or less done our family get-togethers the past two days, so it's very mellow this Christmas morning. Son Michael is home for 10 days from Marine Corps base in 29 Palms, California.

And tree leaves are not the only reason autumn is my favorite season of the year. I recall taking an interest in fungi and mushroom variety about 8 year ago after spotting an Amanita.

I'd imagine that the Ascending the Giants guys may have a crossbow around somewhere, but for this pine and a 219 foot spruce I saw them climb, they used a Big Shot to sling a long throw line over. Then the climbing line. Sillett used a crossbow every time I've seen him go up, but the trees are even taller. Has like a heavy fishing line. Then once over, they haul a throw line with the fish line, then a climb rope for STEP #3 with the throw line. The crossbow came in handy last autumn when we needed to span 300 feet of measuring tape across a small valley. Shot it over horizontally, then used the small line to pull the tape back over in the air suspended above vine maples and other trees we never could have manually fought the taper up and over.

Here's a Bigleaf maple leaf I wanted some pics of, while waiting for Taylor and the news guys to show up. There were several like this. Pretty cool how the spot areas kept the chlorophyll green intact into mid-October.

The guy in the green vest and red shirt (previous post) is the writer for the newspaper. Still managed to get himself into the woods, although he had a near fatal crash years ago, not long after getting out of the military. His leg is so bent when he walks, I'd swear the knee joint will snap. But he just keeps right on moving. Good writer too. The newspaper photographer below does rock climbing, and seems to hope to go up with them someday to be able to photograph from above for the experience. A fisherman in his spare time too.

Few more ... The speck like a bird is the climber between the tree tops taken with an 11-16mm

Maybe last January I posted about the world's tallest pine we found near Grants Pass, Oregon. Not far away, Michael and Frank found a new largest Ponderosa pine for Oregon. Yesterday, Ascending the Giants, came down to measure the big tree nomination, but climbed the tallest pine first, to get a tape-drop number. A bit over 268 feet, and just a few centimeters different from our laser rangefinder numbers earlier this year. The local TV news and the newspaper folks showed up too, and hung-out for the day. Michael and I left the group for a short while to do a bit more exploring, and found what is at least the 2nd tallest known Sugar Pine. Could tie the tallest, but is at least 2nd, near 253 feet. I think the climbers are going to fit that one in too, although the discovery was unexpected. That makes only two Sugar Pines known over 250 feet. Here's a bunch of photos from yesterday.

If you have a pro help you, it should not become much of a problem. I planted 3 purple beech in an area 15 to 25 feet from our house, knowing they can stay there for a century or more as long as occassional pruning is done.

If one was made, I would laminate layers, after recalling handles that were not, which split along the grain. Most handles fit me pretty good. I did customize a wood rifle stock once to fit my hands, fingers and thumbs though.

That thing looks like a big chunk of driftwood. What are you going to do with it? Dry it and mount it?

The shirt cracks me up - LOL Sort of looks like a big bush growing up out of your belt-line

One more of my Daughter from a few weeks ago at Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park

The model's escort. Noticed the light as she walked under the Bigleaf maples and asked here to pause for a minute. This one was taken with the Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens I just bought this week.

Few more of the model, locally, and the posing experiment. Again, the idea is applying various poses to trunks, stumps, logs, etc., at the coast redwoods. Or locally too I suppose. But the redwoods was the inspiration for this tangent.

Man and woman from a town 10 minutes from my home, who I met at Boy Scout Tree Trail trailhead: Jedediah Smith Redwoods. The black woman is at the same area, she was with a group of 4 other hikers, all light skinned.

Daughter at Prairie Creek

Got a whim to try something different lately ... photographing "people" among the redwoods. Not just the redwoods with small people for size comparison, but portrait stuff, or shots more close-up. I may hire a model from Eureka, California, but meanwhile, don't know what poses may look best. So I hired a professional model (light blonde) this week, to go to the Columbia River Gorge 1/2 hour east of Portland here, and practice poses in general. Even the photographs with no trees are teachable. I'll post two photos first, showing the Vista House and the redwood Screaming Titans. What they both have in common is shape. Wider at the base, somewhat huge, and taper toward the top. Most photographs in my collection have men. And most redwood photographs have caucasian people. So I'd like to include a few dark skin folks in future photographs too, maybe even native American Indian. A few weeks ago, my daughter (30s) helped for step one, as we looked for a few spots in the redwoods for natural backdrops: logs, boulders, water, stumps, bridges, etc..