Ranger Teaches Tourists Who Can’t See the Forest for the Tree

The world’s tallest tree is somewhere ahead on the trail, and park ranger Karl Poppelreiter is dawdling over a newt.

It’s an interesting newt, as newts go, with a nut-brown back and a bright red belly. But newts are not why a reporter and photographer have joined Poppelreiter on this cold, drizzly morning in the redwoods.

The ranger has promised, with some hesitation and several restrictions, to reveal a closely guarded secret: the precise location of the world’s tallest tree.

First, however, he wants his guests to consider newts. And ferns. And fallen tree trunks. And hollow stumps. Poppelreiter’s attention flashes from one small wonder to another.

“Look at this,” he says, tapping a fallen branch 10 feet high and stuck in the trail like a javelin. “That’s called a widow maker.”

Fascinating. But what about the tallest tree?

Oh, yes, the tree. There’s something you should know about that tree, Poppelreiter warns:

“It really doesn’t stand out among the rest. The significance of this particular tree is that it’s part of a grove with a large number of tall trees. This is a wonderful place to come and enjoy creation. There’s no place as lush and beautiful and enjoyable as a redwood forest.”

That’s great, Ranger Poppelreiter. Now will you show us the darn tree?

Our Obsession With Big

The biggest. The tallest. The heaviest. There’s something big about our obsession with big, nowhere more so than in the redwood and sequoia groves of California.

Here the biggest and tallest trees on Earth draw throngs of nature lovers each year, and many pilgrims aren’t satisfied until they’ve seen the biggest of the big and the tallest of the tall.

Given the lopsided ratio of tree lovers to beloved trees, the most popular specimens could easily be admired to death if public access weren’t limited.

On the other hand, it’s hard to keep the world’s tallest tree a secret.

Measurements made last March confirmed that Mendocino Tree, a coast redwood growing in Montgomery Woods State Reserve near Ukiah, is the tallest known tree in the world. It stands 367 feet 6 inches, or five stories higher than the Statue of Liberty.

Since then, Poppelreiter has had no end of tall troubles: nosy journalists, “tree baggers” eager to check off a new champion on their lists, local residents jealous of their privacy, tour companies seeking another roadside attraction.

Through it all, he has tried to get people to look past the trees and see the forest. Big is a matter of perspective, he explains, more significant to humans than to nature. A towering redwood may inspire awe, he says, but even more inspiring is the web of life to which it belongs.

The usual response: That’s swell, Ranger Poppelreiter. Now, which way to the world’s tallest tree?

Things could be worse. A century ago, California’s biggest redwoods usually were measured and admired only after they were cut down. Only 5% of the original redwood forest remains today, mostly in public parks and reserves.

Preservation has brought its own abuses--the kind born of good intentions. There are drive-through redwood trees, their bases hollowed out to accommodate cars. Other trees are encircled by fences and paved trails. Having grown anonymously for centuries, every notable redwood now has a name: Boy Scout Tree. Watermelon Tree. Slot Machine Tree.

Some visitors pry off bits of bark as souvenirs. And there’s something about a huge tree that compels people to link hands and surround it, all the while packing down the soil around its roots.

In 1963, the National Geographic Society went hunting for the world’s tallest tree and found a redwood standing 367 feet 10 inches tall. Publicity about that colossus, promptly christened Tall Tree, helped the campaign to establish Redwood National Park. But publicity also brought crowds, which may explain why Tall Tree is no longer the tallest.

“So many people have stood on the base of the tree that the ground is hard-packed,” says Steve Sillett, a botany professor at Humboldt State University. “Not surprisingly, by the 1970s, 10 to 15 feet of the tree’s top was dead and dying. By the 1990s, 10 feet of its top had fallen away.”

In 1991, a redwood called National Geographic Tree, not far from Tall Tree, was declared the new champ, at 365 feet 6 inches.

Then, in December 1996, a fresh contender was discovered in an unexpected place: Montgomery Woods State Reserve, a small, little-known park 12 miles west of Ukiah along a narrow road of hairpin turns.

Farther inland than most reserves sheltering tall redwoods, Montgomery Woods was surrounded by a scrubby forest of oak and madrona. But deep in a narrow valley, rooted in rich alluvial soil and moistened by a meandering creek, stood an 80-acre grove of giants.

Among them was Mendocino Tree. Redwood lovers already knew it was tall, but no one knew just how tall until a laser range finder pegged it at just under 368 feet.

Based on that measurement, Mendocino Tree was listed in the 1998 Guinness Book of Records as the world’s tallest living tree. The book even mentioned that it grew in Montgomery Woods. But the short paragraph, buried among other curiosities--longest conga line, most tattoos--sparked no tourist stampede.

Reassured by this indifference, Sillett agreed to participate last March in a documentary funded by the Save the Redwoods League. As cameras rolled, he climbed Mendocino Tree and confirmed its height with a weighted measuring tape. It stood 367 feet 6 inches tall--indisputably the world’s tallest.

With everyone involved vowing not to reveal the tree’s location, Sillett thought he’d found the best of two worlds: The inner circle of tree fanciers had a new champion to study and celebrate, but the big redwood had escaped the notice of the trampling masses.

This, of course, could not last.

“I guess we were pretty naive,” Sillett says now. “I had no idea this was going to be such a big deal.”

News Article Starts Tourist Stampede

Step by slow step, Ranger Poppelreiter is getting closer to the world’s tallest tree. He ducks under a boxcar-size log, then crosses the creek on another fallen giant.

Things have been crazy, he says, ever since the first reporter called him last June.

Tipped off by a boy who’d been reading the Guinness book, reporter Mike Geniella of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat asked if Poppelreiter would guide him to the world’s tallest tree.

The ranger hemmed and hawed, whereupon Geniella suggested that if Poppelreiter didn’t help, sooner or later someone else would.

Poppelreiter relented, figuring he could at least educate people about biodiversity and forest ecology.

The front-page headline on June 4 missed those subtleties. “World’s tallest tree near Ukiah,” it declared, next to a big picture showing the ranger staring up at the tree.

Late that night, a couple walked up to the front desk at Orr Hot Springs resort, two miles from Montgomery Woods, and asked: Which way to the world’s tallest tree?

The stampede had begun.

From June through September, 15,300 people visited the reserve, double the usual number, Poppelreiter says. People were spotted walking the mile-long loop trail, newspaper in hand, trying to match the picture to a tree.

The small parking lot started overflowing on weekends. The pit toilet filled up faster. Tour-group operators called Poppelreiter, asking if they could bring in busloads of tourists. A Japanese film company wanted to drive a boom truck into the grove.

So far, Poppelreiter has fended off all proposals for industrial-strength tourism. The road to the reserve is too narrow for tour buses, he says, and the trail to the grove is too steep for frail walkers.

On Poppelreiter’s orders, there are no signs or arrows pointing to the tree. What’s more, he is the only park employee who knows where Mendocino Tree is. Other staffers prefer not to know, he says, so they don’t have to lie to visitors.

This don’t-tell approach is not universally popular.

“As a ‘tree-hugging,’ redwood-loving taxpayer, I feel I have a right to know and see . . . the new tallest tree,” one frequent visitor complained in a letter to Poppelreiter.

But other locals think things should be even more secretive. Road signs to the park have a habit of disappearing. At Orr Hot Springs, employees don’t know or won’t tell where the tallest tree is.

Race for the Biggest Life Form

Poppelreiter says he understands the popular preoccupation with the biggest and tallest.

“It’s our culture,” he shrugs. “We’re competitive.”

But the subject of big, he notes, is more complicated than many people appreciate.

Consider the General Sherman Tree, a giant sequoia growing in Sequoia National Park. Shorter than many coast redwoods, it nonetheless has a greater volume of wood--52,500 cubic feet--than any other tree.

For decades, it was recognized as the largest living thing on Earth, but only because organisms not clearly visible were excluded from the equation. In recent years, scientists have reported life forms far bigger, if less charismatic, than a redwood or sequoia.

A single underground fungus grows beneath 1,500 acres of forest in Washington state. In Utah, a 106-acre grove of quaking aspens, genetically identical and growing from the same root system, was recognized last year by Guinness as the “plant with the greatest mass.”

Poppelreiter notes that most redwoods sprout from the roots of established trees, not from seeds, so it’s possible that DNA testing could show the entire Montgomery Woods grove to be one gigantic organism, as if each towering tree were no more than a hair on the same head.

But enough of science. The ranger knows why his guests are here. He stops along the trail and stares into the forest.

There, he announces. The world’s tallest tree.

Where? A dozen stout trunks soar skyward, vanishing into the canopy. From this vantage point, any one of them could be the tallest.

One fat specimen seems a likely candidate, but Poppelreiter points to a skinnier trunk nearby. At 10 feet in diameter, Mendocino Tree is a mere beanpole compared with some of its neighbors. Mossy ridges of bark the size of railroad ties spiral up the trunk, pointing toward the first branch, 190 feet up.

There is more that could be said about Mendocino Tree. But at Poppelreiter’s insistence, that’s as much as can be revealed here.

“If this tree can represent the redwoods and their imminent peril, then this tree has done a good thing,” he says. “If I can protect this tree and the area around it from overuse, then I’ve done a good thing.”

Sooner or later, lightning will strike or an ill wind will blow through Montgomery Woods, and another redwood in some other grove will become the world’s tallest tree.

The crowds here will thin. The pit toilet will fill more slowly. And Ranger Poppelreiter will breathe a record-breaking sigh of relief.