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Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

Big Basin is one of my favorite places on earth. If you have never been there - park down at the beach where the kite surfers like to hang out and walk up that way. It is a very long hike with some exposed areas at the beginning but totally worth the effort. You will feel like you are in Jurassic Park.

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Protip: You can actually walk through Jurassic Park at Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park about 5.5 hours’ drive north of SF.

Park at Fern Canyon and walk through Fern Canyon to Fern Canyon Trail, James Irvine Trail, and Clintonia and Miner’s Ridge Trails.

Fern Canyon was one of the filming locations of Jurassic Park and the rest of the state park has stunning old growth redwood groves.

I did Skyline to the Sea Trail several years ago with my wife and it was great. https://www.redwoodhikes.com/BigBasin/S-to-S.html We actually were car camping at Little Basin the day before the August 17, 2020 fire. :-( https://www.littlebasin.com/

I too love the redwoods. I used to ride my bike all around Kings Mountain and Tunitas Creek and many other roads and just loved the experience.

When people visit I would always take them to Big Basin or Muir Woods vs. the other usual suspects.

I drove my car down tunitas creek and the bikers were glaring at me like I was driving on a sidewalk, lol.

Heh. As long as you are going relatively slowly and giving a little space you are as welcome to the road as anyone IMO.

Maybe they were just suffering from the uphill?

You can't walk through berry creek falls anymore, it's all closed.

And I went to big basin when it was reopened, and it was a little tragic. So many enormous, but black trunks.

You can see a lot of the green growth starting around the trunks (shown in the article pictures), but it might not look lush and green again in your lifetime.

That said, there is a lot of explosive growth of flowers in the santa cruz mountains (watch out for the white poison oak flowers)

For a few months at the turn of the century I lived in nearby Bonny Doon and was training for a long distance hike. 3x/week I'd drive to Big Basin HQ at dawn and run a loop trail through the park. Those are some of the most blissful memories I have. I'd been working in a Santa Clara cubical farm for years leading up to that. The trail head is maybe an hour away? What an amazing contrast between the corporate jungle and primeval forest. Not all "forest baths" are equal, this one was quite extraordinary. I hope it can recover in our life spans.

Unfortunately the CZU Fire did a number on the densest parts of the Skyline to Sea Trail. It is still beautiful but won't look like Jurassic Park in our lifetime.

That is tragic to hear. I am glad I was able to spend so much time there before the fire.

You're talking about the "Skyline to Sea" trail. (Or the way you're talking about it, it's more like "Sea to Skyline" trail.) That is a beautiful hike, but people should be warned, it's a 10 mile uphill trek. If you're healthy, it is a beautiful hike. I'm old, so it takes me most of the day to make that trek.

The first part is pretty flat, but 5 miles in there is some real steep climbs (>15%). The total length is almost a marathon, if we're talking about the same route.

https://www.treesandtents.com/blogpost/skyline-to-the-sea-tr...

AllTrails also reports that it's closed (as do others).

https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/california/skyline-to-the...

After the fire I uploaded some photos I took at the park and visitor center in 2018 to a gallery here if anyone wants to take a look!

https://imgur.com/gallery/ukxqDBf

This makes me sad because I moved to the Bay Area in 2021 and to me Big Basin is just a large burnt out piece of land. I spend a lot of time down there surfing and I don’t think the park has even reopened.

The park is partially reopened last year and you can definitely bike or hike in without reservation (https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=540). My friends and I were able to ride a lot of trails but the shade is mostly gone for sure.

I grew up in the East Bay and was fortunate to have a camping trip there almost every Summer. Some of my earliest outdoor adventures were under, over, and around those giant trees. It really was beautiful.

If you want a similar experience now, your best bet is to head north on 101 into the Redwoods State and National Parks system, visit places like Avenue of the Giants and Women's Club Grove. All north of Garberville. Spots along the road will all be crowded from now through September, but if you do some exploring of your own, you can still find some nice quiet places full of enormous trees.

It is re-opened though not every trail is open. The burn reached highway 1 near Pigeon Point/Ano Nuevo through Big Basin. I rode my bicycle through Butano to China Grade last week and went through 236 earlier this year to Boulder Creek.

I hiked up to the old airstrip in Butano in July 2021 right after the fire. I probably missed seeing the signs saying it was closed. There were lots of still standing redwood trees that looked charred like logs from a fireplace. And then all along the height of the trees there were little green shoots poking out. Still alive.

I haven't been since the fire sadly, but even the drive through the park and down to Santa Cruz was magnificent too - amazing redwood lined curving backroad.

I went to Sykes camp up the Pacific Ridge trail at the Big Sur trail head in 2010, a year after the fires went through in 2009. Everything was green, growing, and verdant but push back the leaves and you'd find waxy ash everywhere. It will take time.

Pine Ridge Trail

Have you been since it reopened after CZU?

The rancho del oso entrance at waddell beach is still closed. I go there regularly and they have yet to open past the little visitor center building half a mile in off the highway.

Haven’t been since like 2015

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