How to Visit Tall Trees Grove Trail in Redwood National & State Parks

Even though there are tons of awesome trails in Redwood Forest National and State Park, the Tall Tree Grove Trail has easily claimed a spot in our top 10 hikes in the area. This trail features a scenic drive, mystical green forest, giant redwood trees that are over 350 feet tall, a beautiful creek, banana slugs, and if you're lucky you might even find some blackberries to snack on. The only tough thing about this trail is that if you want to see all of this, you're going to have to work for it. This trail does require a permit and only 50 parties are allowed in each day. On the bright side though, the permit is free and you can apply for it up to four weeks in advance. Along with the permit that you will be receiving in your email, you will also be getting the combination to the lock on this gate. They are constantly changing the lock so it won't do any good for you to ask us for the combination. You need to be sure not to let any cars follow you in through the gate. You may feel kind of rude locking them out, but if they get in without a permit, the best case scenario is they're probably going to get a ticket and the worst case scenario is they're going to get locked in overnight. From the gate, you're going to be making a six and a half mile drive down a really nicely maintained dirt road. You are definitely going to want to take your time here because it is just a single lane road and occasionally you will find yourself running into traffic coming the other way. At least while you're taking your time, you can also take in the views as this drive winds its way through the beautiful lush forest. After driving for a while, you will find yourself at the trailhead of the hike. There is quite a bit of parking here, but it can fill up. If there is no parking here, there is a lower lot. Luckily, we snagged the last spot in the upper parking area. Here are the stats of this hike. It comes in with a round trip distance of four miles, with an elevation gain of right around 800 feet. This is a lollipop loop trail, which means it's mountain back trail with a loop at the end of it. You're going to be starting off the trail by going downhill pretty much all the way to the start of the loop, which means you're going to have to tackle that hill on the way back up. And it's this hill that gives this trail a moderate to strenuous rating. But if you get tired, at least there are plenty of benches to rest on. This trail is a good one to take your time on. There's a lot to see here. There are obviously the massive trees that line the trail and some of them look like they have a good story to tell because they've been hit by lightning. It's amazing that they're still alive because they're hollowed out from the inside. And if you look hard enough, you might be able to spot some mushrooms. You're probably not going to have to look as hard to see the giant redwood trees that have fallen over the top of the trail or the really cool tree tunnel. As much of a pain as permits can be, one good thing about them is that we felt like we had almost this entire place to ourselves. We did pass other hikers here and there, but the vast majority of the time we felt like we were all alone out there. And we also found these trees which aren't as difficult to climb as they look and make for one heck of a good photo op. Even though we've been to places like Sequoia National Park and seen the absolutely massive trees there, these trees are equally as impressive. While the sequoias might win in a contest of who has a wider trunk, these are some of the tallest trees on the planet. Some of the trees here can reach 300 feet tall or even higher. One of the popular tall trees in the area is known as Hyperion and it was at one point the tallest tree on earth. However, there is no trail to go see Hyperion and we ask that you don't try to find it. The tree is located in a very overgrown area and you would have to do a lot of damage to the environment to try to find it. And I hate to break it to you, but even if you were to find Hyperion and stand at the bottom of it looking up, it's going to just look like another tall tree much like the rest of the tall trees in the area and you're going to be disappointed. But enough about our old friend Hyperion because at this point in the hike we are at the bottom of the hill. And just in case you were wondering how wide some of these fallen redwood trees are, they're about 1v length wide. At this point in the hike you will have descended around 800 feet and the trail is going to start to level out. One of the great things about this trail is that it is well defined and it's also really well marked. You will be encountering a couple of forks along the way but you never have to wonder which way to go because there's always plenty of signs. It was pretty wild to see all of the hollowed out trees along the trail because of lightning strikes. Some of them were so empty inside that it was amazing that they were still able to stand on their own. After hiking along for a while on the easier part of the trail we came to what would end up being our favorite part of this hike, the loop. You can obviously go either way here but we ended up going clockwise. The loop portion of this trail is only about nine tenths of a mile long but it is absolutely gorgeous. It's going to be teleporting you straight into dense forests that look like they used for scenes from the Jurassic Park movies. Luckily you can just enjoy the scenery and not have to worry about the raptors or t-rexes. One of the things that made this trail so photogenic were the trees that were absolutely covered in moss. It was kind of interesting because up to this point in the hike we had not seen a lot of moss but here it was everywhere. If you fancy yourself a landscape photographer these twisted moss covered trees are going to be like a dream come true for you. One good thing about the moss is that it is not parasitic to the trees that it grows on. It takes nitrogen gas out of the atmosphere and converts it into nitrogen compounds that plants need to grow. The only time that it can be considered harmful to the trees is if it grows so dense that the tree cannot get enough sunlight. This might stunt the growth of the tree a little bit. If it wasn't for the fact that the canopy above had plenty of gaps to let the sunlight in I bet the moss would give everything a super creepy look here. This is one of those spots where you could spend the entire day but unfortunately it's a fairly short loop and soon enough we were back at the intersection. When we first started the loop we noticed that there was a trail marker pointing down towards the creek. We didn't have any intentions of doing the entire 1.7 miles but we figured we'd head down and check out the scenery. If you have time on your visit this is a fun area to explore. This video was shot in September and the creek was low enough that we were able to get over it pretty easily. If you're still looking for a way to add some distance to your hike there are several trails down here to do that. Just remember that you still have a pretty decent sized hill to climb up on the way back to the car. While we were exploring we crossed over the stream one more time because we saw this really interesting area and it led us to a pair of banana slugs and some blackberry bushes. There's nothing quite like a tasty and free snack in the middle of your hike. And to top it off the blackberries here are V approved. The trail did continue on past the blackberry bushes but it started to get very overgrown. The scenery was beautiful here but the trail seemed like it eventually faded away so we started to head back. I think that V and I were spending just a little bit more time here because we weren't exactly looking forward to going up that big hill. The hill isn't really all that bad though. We have done a lot of steeper hikes in the past but this one will give you a decent workout. The only tough part about it is that once you start the main section of the climb it is a relentless 1.2 miles of uphill. Luckily whoever was in charge of creating the trail did add a bunch of switchbacks though otherwise this trail would be a whole lot steeper. I'm not even going to try to lie we definitely did take some breaks on our way up the hill. And that's going to do it for our hike on the Tall Trees Grove Loop Trail. We highly recommend this trail and it is definitely worth all the hard work that it takes to get that permit. Be sure to stay tuned for the video next week where we head just down the road a little bit and hike the Lady Bird Johnson Grove Trail. This is another beautiful hike and you don't even need a permit for that one. If you enjoyed this video be sure to like, comment, and subscribe because those are by far the best things that you can do to support this channel. You can follow along with our adventures on Instagram at thatadventurelife underscore official and for all the information about this hike as well as other awesome things to do in the area head on over to thatadventurelife.com