Grove of Titans redwoods | aka GOT
Continued from: Coast Redwoods Information and Photos
Copyright 2009 - 2011 by Mario Vaden
Note: please no email for gps for the Grove of Titans. My redwood pages already have the comments selected to share about this grove. The clues I found are still online for the more part. And there is no need to condense them into one spot. Several people stated that they prefer the hunt, so why not make the treasure search more fun for them. Thank you all.
The Grove of Titans is a coast redwood grove in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, with several of the largest known coast redwoods. It is not large for acreage, but significant for the rare sized redwoods in it. These largest of coast redwoods were discovered in 1998 by Prof. Steve Sillett & Mr. Michael Taylor. The park is between Crescent City and Hiouichi in northern California. The location remains basically unpublished. Richard Preston had written about it
One of the most big redwoods in the Grove of Titans is Del Norte Titan. It's across the water from the campground. Its in the hundreds of acres of forest on the oposite side of the Smith River from the campground. The three redwoods there with the most name recognition are Lost Monarch, Screaming Titans and Del Norte Titan. But there are more redwoods there of all sizes, including other species. See my main redwood page where a page link is provided for a few.
Image at right: Del Norte Titan in Grove of Titans.
The Grove of Titans redwoods extends through an old growth valley, highlighted with autumn color from vine maples.
Rounded to the foot, the trunks are about 26' for Lost Monarch 26' and 23' for Del Norte Titan 23'. Not only is the size interesting, but what grows on these redwoods. Aragorn has a little bit of the epiphyte Oregon Spikemoss or Selaginella oregana, 110' to 120' high. El Viejo del Norte is heavily laden with hundreds of pounds of fern mats.
Several redwoods in Grove of Titans are about twice the size of the Stout Grove redwood found directly across the river from the campground. The Stout redwood is about 16' diameter. But the park may have upwards of 50 redwoods larger than the Stout redwood: not limited to the Grove of Titans, but scattered about in the several thousand acre park.
Screaming Titans in the Grove of Titan gigantic too. It's a twin redwood fused for enough of the lower trunk to considered as one redwood. It is about 30' diameter, which is almost 5 feet wider at dbh than General Sherman, the largest known Sequoidendron.
The grove has plenty of sword ferns, and no poison-oak like you may have seen along highway 199 or a Hatton trail offshoot. Although not far from Grove of Titans on Hiouchi Trail is a poison-oak on steroids nearly 180' tall.
Regeneration of the redwood species is slow in the Grove of Titans area, but it happens. And you may have heard that redwoods don't germinate a lot in some areas. During the winter of 2007, a storm broke a big limb off El Viejo del Norte. Fragments grew sprouts. My October 2008 visit during heavy rain showed more growth. I am watching it develop. If these remain alive, the redwoods will basically be genetic clones of El Viejo del Norte. Another glance in spring 2010, showed that the new redwoods were still alive.
Update: In 2010, I explained to a certain man named Mickelson, why it would be unwise to liberally shared details about this grove. Following what some would call loose lips on his part, wear & tear that started to heal-over by 2009, reversed once again, giving foot traffic an upper hand. July 2011, I got a photo from a visitor (Beebe) to that grove, showing big carved graffiti on a log near El Viejo del Norte. That connotes why it can be better when people to earn a set of keys. Hundreds of others before Mickleson, understood the wisdom of being very discreet: kudos to them. Hopefully the graffiti does not expand to the bark of living redwoods. The less of this kind of monkey-business, the better the Grove of Titans will remain. As the months have passed, the difference between a fool that uttereth all his mind and the wise that keep it in until afterwards becomes more clear: one desiring to tell anyone and everyone, the others selectively sharing.
Why some redwood locations were secret.
See ... Why Some Locations Are Secret