Caves inside coast redwoods

Redwood National and State Parks

by Mario Vaden

 

Select an image to enlarge .. captions provided

This is similar to the other page about goosepens. But there are a few Coast Redwoods with hidden rooms where cave is the best description. So this is like Goosepen Part II with extra photos and less writing. The photos below, clockwise, are the Church redwood are Jedediah Smith RSP, another old trunk interior at Prairie Creek RSP, the Caveman redwood at Jedediah Smith RSP, and another at Prairie Creek RSP. The last photo partially conveys a sense of what it's like to look outside from the inside, although there's a unique feeling to actually standing in the cave. It felt a little like being in an old mine adit, except being surrounded by a shell of living cells.

I illuminated the Church Redwood with wireless flash triggers and 2 Canon flash. My camera with wide angle lens on tripod was outside the trunk, and the opening is much smaller than the photo makes it look. The interior though, is roughly 30% larger than what's shown, because more is out of view on the sides. The doorway is comparable to the bottom left photo where I am exiting the other Coast Redwood called Caveman near the Clark's Creek side of Jedediah Smith. That one also has two small windows.

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The caves of the Coast Redwood forest are also hidden up high in some of the biggest old growth. Some are undiscovered, others have been found. Some of the scientists doing research climbing have encountered these. One example being Adventure (9th largest known Coast Redwood as I type this in 2013). It's described by author Preston in his redwood adventure book