Berry Glen, Trillium Falls to Lady Bird Johnson Grove

Redwood National Park

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I got out of town because I heard it was snowing in the Lady Bird Johnson Grove. Of course, if I actually wanted to see it, I probably needed to toss everything in the car and go out right at that moment. I should have at least not shied away from going on Wednesday just because it was raining in the morning. Of course, I wouldn't want to actually test my mud and snow tires, but walk up to it along Berry Glen. This trail was actually in a plan once, but something happened and I did something else. I can't even remember what happened now. Then my memory tacked on an extra 2 miles to the length meaning it would take a greater effort to get started soon enough for a reasonable finish. But the most worrying thing about it is the way the interpretive trail around Lady Bird Johnson Grove gets about 50 feet past the junction for stop 8 where it mentions that just past that doubled redwood tree is a clearcut from the 1960s. (Paraphrased from memory from my 2017 hike, so I've probably got the date wrong at least.) If that doesn't color one's thoughts on the trail just passed, I don't know what will. I was pleasantly surprised when checking for the exact length to find the trail rated three stars (of five) on the Redwood Hikes site which adds, "The redwoods are pretty impressive for upland redwoods." They're downright tough to please (or just trying to have a meaningful star system) so that's high praise.

The easiest start is the big parking lot for the Trillium Falls Trail. It is the location of an old mill.

There's not one, but two interpretive trails available along this route. I can't find an online version of the brochure for the Lady Bird Grove Trail, leaving the options of driving up there to get one or doing the loop twice to pick one up while hiking. Trillium Falls has a Redwood EdVentures Quest which I fully intended to do on this round. I failed to download the brochure before starting and hardware failed me on the way. I didn't even see the box for the physical brochures, so that one seems to be online only now. I headed out along the paved trail following the arrows on the signs for Trillium Falls. I still wanted to do the loop and I wanted to do it first since I know the light is no good late in the day when I did the loop before.

Little trees down low.

Prairie Creek runs along below the trees and those nearest it seem young, but the ones up the hill have the big rounded tops of old trees. I turned up the gravel path and under the trees. It felt really cold and really damp to make that cold penetrating even if it wasn't freezing. The falls come quickly on the trail and were giving off quite a roar. The few people on the trail started just before I did, so I found them there. The earliest were below the bridge playing with camera equipment and the other was moving on.

Trillium Falls is only a 10 foot drop with a bit of cascade. The woods certainly have a lot of light, but not the falls just yet.

I followed the previous hiker and moved on. The trail has a little space to look out over the creek and meadow and I was surprised how high I had climbed above them, then it turns and climbs higher. It takes a long wandering way up, then back down through some nice named groves. At one point it gets just close enough to the edge of the old growth to see the cleared space with few redwoods beyond. Mostly, nice trees with more nice trees around them, though.

A nice place to sit along the way.

Winding back down along the wide path. The forest has greens of many levels.

The trail crosses a road which has its own potential for hikes and appears to be used for such. After a little more winding it comes back to join this road for the final descent.

A break in the trees and the nude alder branches provide a view of the far ridge with old redwoods along the top. They do seem to stop abruptly at the left.

It's a short way back to the parking lot where the climbing road meets the lower road. I turned the other way to cross the swollen Prairie Creek, nearly slipping on the dead leaves while crossing the bridge. It has a viewing platform for looking out over the meadow which apparently gets frequent visits of Roosevelt elk. There is a line of boulders, then a small potential parking area before the highway crossing. There's also a large dirt turnout in the north direction. Another turnout in the south direction on the other side is private property, so crossing the highway is required.

Prairie Creek is looking a bit bankfull at the moment which reminded me that the seasonal bridges are down now.

The old road continues on the far side behind a gate. There's no sign for the trail except one to say bikes are allowed. I continued along to a triangle junction and found trail signs. Davidson Trail goes off to the left to Lost Man Creek and Berry Glen off to the right on the little used road.

Keep on going straight to find the bottom of Berry Glen Trail.

Finally getting a start on Berry Glen Trail. The sign warns that it is a 1200 foot climb in 2.5 miles from here.

I followed along this road, paved except for a small stream crossing where it dips down above a culvert. A sign soon points off to the left along an overgrown logging road. It leaves that even sooner to start climbing on trail past tall broken stumps and short stumps from after the invention of the chain saw.

The riparian zone and a stream draining the area between here and Lady Bird Johnson Grove above. A lot of water for such a small area.

Stumps along the way. The natural one is hard to miss, but there was an even bigger tree on the right where there is now a short stump.

The trail takes short switchbacks upward. The cut stumps vanish after the first few turns and there's just a lot of big trees and little trees all reaching for a distant sun.

Stumps behind, but just amazing trees above.

The floating hemlock (maybe redwood) over the trail. There's plenty of room to pass under the log it is growing on, but good call on sticking some roots out to stabilize the position.

The wide trail and ferns that generally come to my chest, sometimes overhead, tend to help the brain scale the big trees down to something that seems more reasonable, but they're still really big.

The trail levels out and then starts drifting closer and closer to a ridge. I gradually noticed a lack of redwoods to my left. The right side trees are still tall and impressive, but left often bending and always narrow.

A pair of stumps ahead serve to really accentuate that the left has had the trees cleared away. Still tall trees to the right.

Some of those tall trees to the right. There's a lot of redwoods, but not quite all.

The trail drops off the ridge to the right then starts to drift upward among more grand trees. It's a long stretch of good trees. It looked like the trail was a little harder recently as I passed two rounds bigger than I am tall down at the end of a long trail of crushed ferns. It was all quite perfect as I hiked it. Well, still cold, but one has to take the weather as it comes.

Down into the giants.

How does one capture a 250, 300, 350 foot tree within a forest?

I got to feeling there were trees missing again, this time off to my right. This clearing was a bit different, though. As the spot should all be old growth (according to maps I have seen), it might be in instability of the ground that has left a big opening.

It is particularly noticeable that there is a big space here when the trail crosses the edge.

I stepped over a small stream and followed around a large curve and noticed I was on an old road again as I climbed the hill in the other direction. I had actually been on it from when I stepped over the stream, which was drainage for the inside edge of this road. It is cut so wide and travels such a reasonable grade upward that I got to wondering if it was once the main road. That would certainly explain the location of the dedication plaque. (The 15 minute map from 1952 seems to agree. It was the only road up there. It also spells the place as Berry Glenn, but I am going with the spelling on the signs.)

Even wide trail and four or five foot ferns can't make these trees look small.

It is hard to miss the old road bed the trail follows. Most of it is wide enough that opposing traffic would have had no difficulty passing. (That goes especially for this bit.)

The trail makes a long run through those massive and impressive trees right up to the edge of that aforementioned clear cut noted in the Lady Bird Johnson Grove interpretive trail brochure. Two stumps only a few feet tall sit on the edge as the road turns back and shortly joins with the loop trail. Which way to go? I decided to head right, which feels like the way I'm encouraged to go by the signs. The monument is 125 yards that way. It is also the opposite direction to how I went before. It's harder to see on the flatter land of the grove, but the trail continues to follow the old road past the monument all the way back to the new road.

The monument is approximately as one arrives at the Lady Bird Johnson Grove if one arrives the same way the Johnsons and Nixon would have for the dedication ceremony.

More tall trees, now in the Lady Bird Johnson Grove.

I was meeting people again as I traveled the loop. There were more than below, but I'd say the signage serves to attract more to the higher grove. I got to thinking that I was spoiled for really good trees on the way up and these might not be quite so nice. They even seem a bit brown at the top! Later, when I noticed some more brown lower down, I zoomed in with the camera to see it might be due to male cones and all their pollen rather than a lack of health. I do have to give it that it has a lot more rhododendrons and tan oaks. I continued around the loop when I got to the junction and found more rhododendrons along the next quarter mile than along the whole of the trail coming up. It could just be that I missed them when they were individuals, but there's really quite a lot up there.

Down the northerly slope where some of those rhododendrons live.

The second half of the loop is a built trail rather than more old road.

Arriving back to the junction with the Berry Glen Trail, I was done with the loop and turned down for the return.

Down along the road once more. It's a little harder to see the cut in some areas as the inside has grown up quite well.

The road is hard to see where it leaves, but there's a small path along it where someone may have been following it.

This fire carved stump with holes through on all sides caught my eye in both directions.

Pondering the loose twigs that came down in the previous storm, I got to thinking I really need to make myself a guide for the various conifers I encounter. Here, I know there are redwoods, so I look down the hill and that's all I see except for a few Douglas firs. The litter all over the trail included quite a lot of cedar, though. That is to say, incense cedar, which is a cypress with a leaf structure that resembles a juniper more than a pine. Except that some junipers actually have a very pine like look and it gets all very confusing and it needs some sorting. The bark of a redwood has a fibrous look while the incense cedar has wide long scales... so that will be the ones that have slightly more of a puzzle piece look to them! Maybe. Theoretically, I should be able to tell them apart, even when they are tall and most of the details vanish in the distance above. I looked down through the trees and see redwoods still, then slowly realize that one or two don't fit that pattern and are probably Douglas firs instead. They could be spruce.

Arriving back at the edge of the clear cut, it is no surprise to find that there is a large number of large, broken trees. The cut trees once served as a wind break for these, so they suddenly experienced weather that was harder to survive when those trees came down.

Back at the bottom, I found myself with plenty of time to go exploring. Since the continuation of the road was not on my map, I wandered that way for a while. Under all the leaf litter, there is old and still good pavement. The top of the hill has a placed boulder and logs to block it to traffic of any sort but with plenty of room to walk past on a well worn path. I got about halfway to Prairie Creek Camp Road before turning around.

The road makes an easy walk, but the trees aren't quite so impressive.

Back at the road junction, I started along the Davison Trail to Lost Man Creek. I passed an open gate where a new layer of paving over the old stuff starts. I didn't get far along this road before turning back again and crossing the highway. Back at Elk Meadow, I found the elk had come around for a visit.

A bunch of Roosevelt elk in Elk Meadow.

I only watched the elk a few minutes before crossing over the full creek (and trying to slip once on the slick leaves again) and heading back to the lot. Since the elk were much closer to the road side turnouts for elk viewing, I stopped along the way to get a better look at them.

Closer look at the Roosevelt elk in Elk Meadow.

©2021 Valerie Norton
Written 12 Feb 2021