The above pic is from Red Hill Grove looking toward Peyrone Grove.

On the July fourth weekend I decided to explore some of the Red Hill and Peyrone Groves. Fortunately, Crawford Road was not only open but in pretty good condition, so access was good. 

On the first day, I arrived up to the groves in the mid-afternoon and thought there might yet be time left in the day to go hit the largest tree in Red Hill that I' heard about and maybe do some measuring. There was no trail to it, but it was supposed to be close to the road, so I figured I could get to it no problem. 

I was not into the swing of it yet, or maybe just excited and with first-day jitters, because I wandered off to find that first tree without any snacks or water, didn’t change out of my sneakers into hiking boots, didn’t put on my long-sleeved shirt, forgot my hat--I missed half of the usual stuff. I was just not properly accoutered to wander off trail. Of course , I fell up to my knee in a big hole I couldn’t see under the brush within the first 10 minutes and filled my shoe with dirt and bitey things. I guess I'm lucky I remembered to take all my tree-measuring stuff and camera along--probably that was only because I had packed it in my backpack before I left. I got half of my insect bites from the trip during that first evening and ended up coming out of the woods at dark hungry, scratching, and way dirtier than I should have.

The next day I had to go into Peyrone Grove, which has a road to the top of it but no trails within to find its biggest tree. I’ll tell you, I took great pains to go over the list of things I needed to pack/wear that morning.

Unfortunately, it looks like most of the largest trees I was hunting in those groves were rather badly mauled in the Windy Fire, and I came out of the trip finding that some of the biggest reported trees in the groves have fallen victim to Mother Nature. It was a hot weekend with some steep walking and the mosquitoes were out, so between that and the sheer number of heat-stroked and fire-damaged monarchs, the results are kind of depressing.

Below are some details on what I found in the two groves:


Red Hill

I inspected the largest tree measured in Red Hill, and although the post-fire stem of the tree seems to be in pretty good shape, with no deep burns, its branches have mostly fallen, sprinkled on the ground in pieces, and most of the few remaining leaves on the tree look to have suffered heat stroke. There are a few dull green ones on one limb, but there was none of the really bright green that I would associate with new growth. I will not be counting the tree on the Largest Trees List because it looks like it is slowly dying. It's possible in a few years we could see some resurgent bright green coming out of it, but it looks unlikely from what I saw. There are a good number of trees in the area around it that are still in good shape; however, the fire seems to have specifically hit the Red Hill Giant hard.

I did the walk down the old 21s90 (Red Hill Grove Road) through the heart of Red Hill Grove to the cluster of gnarly old monarchs, and it was pretty depressing too. All of the way down the road I encountered about half of the trees as just lifeless black sticks. Of the giants in the big cluster at a couple miles in, it looks like only one of the dozen is still in any way viable, and it is only green on the one side that faces the road, where it likely got less radiated heat during the fire. The highlight of the walk now is just before the cluster, where there is a party of about seven sequoias in a close grouping that is very picturesque.

Below are five pictures of the former Red Hill largest tree.

Below are shots of the cluster in the grove and the Party of Seven.

Peyrone

Peyrone is a very steep grove, with a good deal of undergrowth that makes It hard to hike in places. The former road going in there is impassable with anything on wheels almost as soon as you turn off of Crawford Road and is even closed in places, just hiking. Given the grove's steepness and occasional thick ground cover, it’s a strenuous place to explore the trees.

Peyrone’s largest tree is also in pretty bad shape due to the recent fires, and its upper half is a wreck, as you can see from the pics. It is quite amazingly still alive, but it's somewhat topped, and it is hollowed well down inside its upper stem to the point where I expect more of its upper half to snap off and collapse to the ground in the near future. Some upcoming winter’s snow load will probably remove another 50-75 feet of its maximum height and the bulk of its present greenery. That being said, it still has a lot of bright foliage, so its vascular capability seems to remain good; it will likely remain a presence for a time to come as a big snag.

Below are some pics of the largest from Peyrone. The first two shots are of it shown from a couple of angles uphill of the tree, depicting the fire damage. The third pic is from downhill, showing the base of the tree.