adventure
A Winter Tree Safari Checking out the champion redcedar trees of the Olympic Peninsula written and photographed by Ethan Shaw
WASHINGTON PLAYS HOST to some of the grandest trees anywhere on the planet, bar none—colossal Douglas firs and Sitka spruces, skyscraping noble firs, barrel-trunked ponderosas mingling their vanilla scent with the aroma of sagebrush. But arguably none of them presents such a combination of staggering size, eccentricity and palpable ancientness as the western redcedar. Also called giant arborvitae (or simply, but incorrectly, “cedar”), this “Tree of Life” of many Northwest Coast native cultures ranks among the largest and longest-lived trees in the world, and certainly one of the absolute champs, girthwise. In the Evergreen State, you can find redcedars from the Columbia Mountains of the northeast to the Salish Sea islands, but the tree’s preeminent redoubt is the Olympic Peninsula: Washington’s all-around big-tree hotspot and a fine destination for a wintertime arboreal safari. Along with Vancouver Island, the Olympic Peninsula is ground zero for titanic redcedars. Several of the worldrecord ancients reign here, relics of a stature much more commonly seen before broad-scale logging in the Pacific Northwest. On a single (rainy) day on the westside— basecamped, perhaps, at the Quinault or Kalaloch lodges—you can pay your respects to the best-known jumbo-size champions, found in Olympic National Park, Olympic National Forest and adjoining state forestlands: all breathtakingly primeval monuments of this drenched rainforest realm on the far edge of Washington.
Giants of the Olympic Peninsula We can only begin our survey with a postscript for one of the world’s most epic trees. Until recently, the very biggest redcedar known anywhere grew on the north shore of Quinault Lake, just a cone’s throw from a host of other superlative trees in the “Valley of the Rainforest Giants.” This colossus boasted some 17,650 cubic feet of wood and a trunk 19.5 feet across, with a cavernous, hollow heart in which you (and a gaggle of friends) could stand. In July 2016, the Quinault Lake Redcedar toppled, a reminder that, though these trees seem like permanent fixtures set against the 74 1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE
DECEMBER | JANUARY 2018
