Redwood Grove Visit Now Made in the Shade

With red-tailed hawks soaring high above, Laura Yingling and her boyfriend, Bryan Hunt, hiked across a gentle stream and down a mile-long dirt path. The Tustin couple paused to admire leaves and brightly colored berries as the sun scorched the Chino Hills nearby.

They were following Carbon Canyon Regional Park’s recently reopened nature trail in search of a rare Southern California redwood grove.

“Are we there yet?” Yingling joked, her bottle of water nearly empty.

When they approached the clearing at the end of the trail, Yingling’s eyes moved up from the auburn trunks of the majestic trees standing before her. Squinting, she caught a glimpse of the top of the tallest redwood, towering 90 feet above her.

“Shade,” she sighed, plopping down on a picnic bench.

The nature trails of Carbon Canyon Regional Park, home to one of the few redwood groves in Southern California, reopened last week after being closed for almost seven months. Redwoods are an oddity in Southern California because the climate is too hot and arid for the trees, which need lots of water to thrive.

After last winter’s record rainfalls, the Brea redwoods were unreachable. The nature trail leading to the Brea redwood grove was overgrown, and the picnic benches under the shade of these trees had been vacant since December. The trails were reopened after sunny days reduced the creek and transformed muddy paths into silt, rangers said.

“This is the wettest year I’ve seen,” said senior park ranger Jeff Bukshpan, who has worked at the park since 1984. “The paths leading to the redwoods became too dangerous to walk on.”

For the first three months of this year, Bukshpan said, excessive rains caused the plants and shrubs along the path to grow so dense it was difficult to pass through. These days, one still must hop across rocks to cross the creek where the path picks up. Months earlier, the water was almost knee-deep.

Bukshpan said workers clear the path of overgrowth every winter, and the nature trail normally reopens as early as May, depending on the season’s rains.

“I remember there being three or four years where there was a drought and we didn’t have to close the path,” Bukshpan said.

But he said the coastal redwoods welcome the rains.

“The water from the rain made it an excellent, excellent winter for the trees, especially for our young redwoods out there,” he said. “Every tree just looks really lush. They’re staying green.”

About 200 Sequoia sempervirens in 15-gallon containers were planted at the park in 1975, Bukshpan said. Once five to 15 feet high, those trees now tower close to 90 feet. Rangers have planted more trees each Arbor Day and officials estimate there are now an additional 60 redwoods in the 10-acre grove.

Another grove of Sequoia sempervirens can be found at UC Irvine, a living monument to a former professor’s landmark research in tree cloning. About 300 redwoods, produced by test-tube cloning, were planted on the campus in 1982, but more than two-thirds died several years ago after gophers chewed through the underground watering pipes.

Bukshpan said the tallest tree in the world is in Northern California, a redwood that stands 368 feet tall.

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The redwoods, which produce small cones, thrive on lots of sunshine and lots of water, Bukshpan said.

The Carbon Canyon park has an irrigation line that waters the redwoods for a couple of minutes every day and night.

According to rangers, redwoods grow better in groves because they tend to support each other.

“They’re not a real deep-rooted tree,” Bukshpan said. “Together, they can hold more moisture.”

The area around the base of the tree is kept damp, as are the sponge-like red trunks, Bukshpan said.

“When you press your fingers against the moist trunk, water appears,” he said. “The redwoods in the center of the grove are taller, because they were sheltered by the trees in the outer perimeter and so they reach for the sun and grow faster.”

The silt that spills out of the canyon also aids in the growth process, Bukshpan said, providing nutrients and fertile soil.

“These newer trees we’ve planted are growing a lot faster than some of the earlier ones because of rain and the soil,” he said.

A densely shaded part of the grove has become a popular picnic spot, rangers say. Benches and water fountains have been erected, and the grove draws not only hikers but many animals as well.

A wide variety of birds, including quail and crows, perch in the trees. Bukshpan said visitors have spotted gophers, skunks, opossums, coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, snakes and rabbits on the path and in the grove.

“In dry brush, a little critter will sound like a wolf or something,” Bukshpan noted. As he spoke, loud crunches could be heard and bushes nearby started to move.

Out stepped Rosalinda Chacon, 20, and her friend, Deana Schafer, 25. The Redondo Beach residents had been hiking through miles of thick brush and were visibly relieved to see the grove and the shady area it enveloped. Beads of sweat dotted their foreheads as they rested on a bench for a few minutes to drink water before continuing their hike through the cool grove.

“Now that’s more like it,” Chacon said.