Half of this grove was lost in the Castle Fire last year, and of the remaining trees many more are sorely damaged looking, there is no getting around that. Two of Flint's large unnamed trees from the grove are no more than charred columns now. The well-known Day Tree/Waterfall Tree is now a snag and we are not sure if it will survive. The Window Tree has broken off well below its namesake window, and Flint's Large Perimeter Tree looks like a wreck. All of the large trees living or not have been catalogued by Sue Cag of ilovetrees.net, and she was good enough to direct me to the largest remaining ones so I could measure them.
The Stagg Tree survived the fire completely intact, which is great; however, it looks like the second largest in the grove, the Alder Creek Giant, was damaged to some extent in its top. Most of any tree's material is in its lower trunk, so its damage didn't really reduce the giant's volume much. However, around its base is strewn a great deal of broken branches and debris. It obviously lost a lot of its living matter recently from the fire damage. That plus the steep slope upon which the tree perches made its measurements very difficult to take.
The giant was also hard to measure because of its shape. It has a very elliptical upper half and its top is really several vertical reiterations. It was an unusual one to calculate volume for, but rewarding as it turned out to be quite large.
The next largest surviving tree I saw is the Ares. It's broken off short, but will probably survive. It will take many years to produce a new leader, but I believe it will. It does have a significant lean, which worries me.
Below are the measurements I got on the two trees.
Tree NameHeightGroundDBHTrunk Vol. (ft) Perim.(ft) (ft) (cu.ft.) Alder Creek Giant 268.5 90.5 21.7 35,694 Ares 214.0 61.3 17.4 24,230
The final trees I measured are the two large ones that were mentioned in Flint's book in passing. Unfortunately, they both were burned fully and did not survive. Nevertheless, since the majority of the base of a sequoia usually remains even after the tree is killed in a fire, I was able to take some circumferences and bole diameters. Based on estimates of what is left of the trunk, I would guess that they were both in the neighborhood of 26,000 cubic feet prior to the fire.
Also shown below are a couple of big-base trees in the grove. The one from Flint's book is in very poor shape, seriously burned in both the remaining base and the top. Its base was unmeasureable with all the debris around it, and the tree has only very small amounts of greenery left in its top. The wreck may cling to life, but only barely. However, the other wide-base tree Sue pointed me to is sure to survive and had approx 87 1/2 feet circumference remaining after what must have been much less severe damage from the fire.
Large Sequoias below are the Alder Creek Giant in the first three pics and Ares in the last pic.
Below are some of the other trees of note in the grove that took damage from the Castle Fire, respectively: Window, Flint's Large Perimeter Tree, and Sue's Wide-Base Tree.
Below are the two large trees from Flint's book that are victims of the Castle Fire. I would estimate they were once approximately 26K cubic feet in volume based on the remaining dimensions. The large one in the Pink Forest on Sonny's escape route and the Backyard Tree.