Damage to giant redwood ‘Grove of Titans’ sparks plan for new trail

• Donate money to building a boardwalk into Grove of Titans via Redwood Park Conservancy, 707-464-9150

It began as a hidden grove of redwood trees so enormous they were named for gods of the ancient world.

Then it became the worst-kept secret at Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, a destination being “loved to death” by adoring hordes of visitors.

“It’s supposed to look like virgin forest passed down from prehistory, but instead, it’s starting to look like the Los Angeles freeway system,” said Brett Silver, acting superintendent for California’s northern state parks.

Now officials at the Redwood National and State Parks system are planning to raise $1 million for a trail into the once-secluded Grove of Titans.

Home to some of the world’s largest redwoods by volume — with trees 320 feet tall and 26 feet in diameter — the Titans are located off-trail in the 10,430-acre park just south of the Oregon-California state line.

“We’re planning to build a boardwalk that lets people get close to the largest trees without damaging them,” Silver said. “But until we do, we’re asking people not to go searching for them and doing more damage.”

Discovered in 1998 by Steve Sillett and Michael Taylor — and featured in the 2007 book “The Wild Trees” by Richard Preston — the grove became a sought-after spot for big-tree hunters in the park’s primeval rainforest.

The book keeps the grove’s location secret. But the allure of finding trees with names such as Lost Monarch and the Screaming Titans soon inspired websites devoted to showcasing the giants and hinting at their location, Silver said.

As online information made locating the Titans easier, the number of people seeking them began to rise, and then it skyrocketed.

The result: The trees' root systems were laid bare by user-created trails that damage the way redwoods take in oxygen and nutrients, biologists said. Parks officials say the damage is akin to carving seven basketball courts in the middle of the forest.

“The grove has gotten hammered,” Silver said. “The sheer number of people tromping off trail has completely flattened the vegetation in some areas."

It wasn’t always that way.

Steve Sillett is one of the world's foremost redwood botanists and a celebrity of sorts in the big tree world.

The first scientist to enter and study the redwood canopy, Sillett pioneered new methods for climbing tall trees with ropes, harnesses and pulleys. He studied the plants and animals that live hundreds of feet above ground in the redwood's botanical islands.

Despite the scientific accomplishments — and profiles in The New Yorker and National Geographic — it's the story of how he and Taylor discovered the Grove of Titans that's become almost mythic in big tree circles.

In May 1998, the two decided to explore the unmapped valleys in Jedediah Smith's old-growth jungles for the big trees they thought might be growing there.

"For the first quarter of a mile, they had to crawl through underbrush on their hands and knees, sometimes lying flat on their stomachs and belly-crawling," Preston wrote in "The Wild Trees." "They wormed under tight masses of huckleberry bushes, or they turned their bodies sideways and rammed through them."

The two ended up crawling down a creek, becoming cold and soaked and exhausted. They yelled at each other for committing such a “heinous bushwhack.”

As darkness came on, Taylor reached a fallen redwood trunk and climbed atop it. In front of him was something almost beyond imagination.

"It was the largest redwood trunk he had seen in all his years of exploring the North Coast," wrote Preston.

That day became known as the "day of discovery."

The Grove of Titans doesn’t host the world’s tallest trees — they're shorter than the tallest coast redwood of 380 feet — but they have particularly massive trunks. The Screaming Titans, two redwoods fused together, is 30 feet in diameter at its base. That’s wider than General Sherman, the famous giant of Sequoia National Park.

Sillett and Taylor gave the grove’s largest trees names such as El Viejo del Norte, Eärendil, Elwing and Lost Monarch. There are about 10 particularly giant trees in the grove.

Preston wrote that they were the largest collection of giant redwood trees on the planet.

"We now know of larger trees elsewhere,” Sillett said in a phone interview from Humboldt State University, where he's a professor. "But there's something about that setting, with the creek right there and so many big trees spaced out, that's incredibly gorgeous."

Sillett spent countless hours in the grove doing research, but it remained a blank spot on the map until 2007.

That began to change with publication of “Wild Trees.”

Mario Vaden, an arborist from Southern Oregon, was one of the first explorers to seek out the Grove of Titans.

He was already exploring redwoods off-trail when “Wild Trees” was published. Using maps, compasses and satellite imagery, he located the Titans in 2008. But he made sure to keep the location secret, he said.

“It was this pristine oasis — it looked basically untouched by humans,” Vaden said of the grove.

Park officials denied knowledge of the grove despite growing interest from the public.

“In the beginning, management policy was not to tell people where it was, so they wouldn’t go looking for it,” Silver said. “What ended up happening was that people went looking anyway."

And the location slowly leaked out.

Websites were established that showcased pictures of the trees and told of epic adventures to find them. Around 2011, a website posted GPS coordinates of the grove, Vaden said. By 2012, human impact in the grove was noticeable.

“It was still beautiful but you would no longer recognize it as being some hidden nook,” Vaden said.

It was the rise of social media — spreading the location to an even larger audience — that forced parks officials to change policy.

“Just a couple people searching off-trail is one thing,” Silver said. “But when it’s 50 to 60 people every single day, that’s entirely different. We knew we had to do something.”

Signs asking people to stay on official trails were first placed last summer on Mill Creek Trail, which runs closest to the grove. New signs are about to be placed near the Titans themselves. Park rangers will spend more time in the area as well.

Visitors who hike off-trail can be cited for damaging plant life, Silver said. While the area is legally open — it's public land — Silver said a specific closure could be imposed “if visitor use does not change.”

“You can see the Titans from Mill Creek Trail,” Silver said. “I know it’s not the same as standing at the bottom of them, but we’re asking people to give us time to get this trail built.”

Official trails in the redwoods — along with campgrounds — are specially designed to protect redwood roots. User trails are not, and can have a negative impact on the trees' health, said Sillett.

"Redwoods are not deeply rooted — they tend to stretch across the surface, which is where they forage for nutrients and oxygen," Sillett said. "People stepping on them all the time has a negative effect on their health. They won't die tomorrow, but their health is degraded.

“One of the disadvantages to being a tree is that you can't move."

Sillett says he supports a boardwalk trail as the best option for the Grove of Titans.

"It's long overdue, given there's so many people finding it," he said. "There's very few of these types of places left, and they have to be protected."

But for the Redwood National and State Parks system, it's no simple task.

The boardwalk trail could be built in about a year and a half once the $1 million is raised, Silver said. The high price tag comes from environmental impact and archeological studies, which are required by law, along with hauling materials so deep into the forest. A total re-route of Mill Creek Trail, so that it goes through the grove, is being considered.

With an already-stretched budget, the parks system is hoping to raise money from outside sources, Silver said.

“We want to do this right, and we want to spend the money now so we won’t have it falling apart 10 years down the line,” he said. “We want viewing platforms so people can take pictures next to the trees without stepping off it."

For Sillett, damage to the grove he discovered has been deeply frustrating.

"I never released the location myself, but it was probably a mistake to popularize it. In hindsight, I wouldn't have even talked about it" for the book, Sillett said.

“It’s a mistake to popularize trees unless they have some protection in place,” he said. “There’s just no way to stop people from stepping all over the things that makes the place so special.”

Donate to boardwalk trail

Want to donate money to build a boardwalk trail that allows visitors to see the Grove of Titans without damaging them? All donations go through the Redwoods Park Conservancy (707-464-9150). Make sure to tell them you want your money to go toward the Grove of Titans trail project.

A note from the author

As a longtime outdoors writer and photographer with a love for redwoods, I’ve known about the Grove of Titans for a long time. I’ve also visited a handful of times over the years. 

One of the toughest decisions I’ve faced as a reporter was whether to write about these titanic trees. Ultimately, I decided against a story focusing on the grove, but I did include a few lines about it in a 2013 story published in the Statesman Journal.

The pictures and video used for this story were taken in February 2015, only a few months before officials posted signs asking people to refrain from going off-trail to find them. I visited a few weeks ago, and met with a ranger patrolling the area, who told me about the new effort and trail. That inspired this story. 

When I did visit, I tried my best to stay on the most frequently traveled routes, but I could certainly be guilty of harming the area’s ecosystem. In seeking the best pictures, I might have stepped on redwood roots. There was no policy against it, but I was part of the problem.

There’s no easy way to deal with the growing number of people visiting our public lands — lands we own as taxpayers — while also protecting special places. Everyone wants a picture of the biggest tree, bluest pool or most beautiful waterfall. It’s human nature to want to share these places, and social media makes that easier than ever.

Allowing people to be inspired by nature but stopping them from destroying the source of inspiration will be a tricky issue in coming years and decades.

The best way to start, I believe, is having an honest conversation about places like Grove of the Titans and how we want to treat them going forward.

Zach Urness has been an outdoors writer, photographer and videographer in Oregon for nine years. He is the author of the book “Hiking Southern Oregon” and can be reached at zurness@StatesmanJournal.com  or (503) 399-6801. Find him on Twitter at @ZachsORoutdoors.

Check out more photos and video of the Grove of Titans online at StatesmanJournal.com/outdoors