Time Heals All Wounds. Or Does it Just Hide Them? The Ghosts of Nelder Grove (Reposted)

According to news reports, the Railroad Fire in the Sierra Nevada has reached the Nelder Grove of Sequoia Trees. It's uncertain what the outcome will be, as the trees are adapted to wildfires, but less so when the forest surrounding the trees is overgrown and stressed by five years of drought. Nelder is kind of a special grove, having been logged a century ago, and left out of the boundaries of Yosemite National Park. Abused, but precious. I wrote about Nelder when I visited for the first time a couple of years ago. Since it has been in the news, I thought you would like to learn of its threatened beauty. The original post follows...

It's a beautiful place, really. It was one of the most serene places I've been in my travels, away from busy roads, cities, tourist traps, and most of all, crowds. We were only 10 miles from Yosemite National Park on a Sunday afternoon, yet we shared the place today with just six other people, all of whom were quietly looking up as if in a a medieval cathedral.

Sequoia groves are like that. The ancient trees are so big and so tall, so grand, that they seem to inhabit a different universe than "normal" trees. They tower above, like placid gods looking down on their earthly domain. They are the only species in their genus,  Sequoiadendron giganteum. The species, or species very much like it, once grew across the northern hemisphere. Through habitat loss, perhaps related to the ice ages, they disappeared from most of their range. Only on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada have they survived, living in 68 isolated groves, and numbering only in the few tens of thousands (the more widespread Coast Redwoods of northwest California are related, but are classed in a different genus).

We were walking through a mountain cathedral, marveling at the beauty and size of the incredible trees, but I realized there were ghosts all around us. There were only 16 mature Sequoia trees along the trail we were following, but there were dozens of gigantic stumps. This serene forest was a shadow of its former glory. Someone had cut down these forest giants. According to the Friends of Nelder Grove, the entire grove includes just over 100 mature trees spread over 1,540 acres (2.4 square miles). There are 277 stumps hidden in the shadows. Three quarters of the trees that had survived for 2,000 years or more were cut down in a few decades, between the 1890s and 1920s.

The sad part is that the wood, though resistant to rot, is brittle and was rarely used for anything more substantial than grape stakes and shakes, even toothpicks. As much as 75% of the wood went to waste, as most of the trees shattered when they hit the ground. Loggers would build trenches filled with tree branches for the trees to have a soft landing, but to no avail.

The remaining trees have been protected since the 1920s, but they still face some serious threats. The trees are adapted to fire. Their trunks are very thick and do not readily burn, so the wildfires that would burn through the grove every decade or so would kill off saplings of other trees and clear the forest duff, but would rarely kill the Sequoia trees. The nature of the fires has been changing. The policy of the Forest Service for decades was to suppress fires at all cost, allowing the other conifers like White Fir and Sugar Pine to grow very tall, reaching the lowest branches of the giant Sequoia trees.

Sugar Pines are especially susceptible to catching fire, and the fire rises up the trunk into the crown. Crown fires can kill the Sequoia trees by destroying their foliage. So by protecting the trees from fire, we've made it easier for fire to destroy them. The situation has not been helped by the growing effects of global warming. Ongoing drought has led to super wildfires on a scale never before seen in the Sierra Nevada. Several recent fires burned through 200,000 acres or more.

The deep conifer forests threaten the Sequoia trees in a different way. The seedlings need bare soil and sunny conditions to germinate, but the thick forest instead provides shade and thick forest duff. The remaining ancient giants are not being replaced by young trees, not at a rate fast enough to guarantee the future of the grove.

At least we've reached a point where we know what many of the problems are, and steps (sometimes baby steps) are being made to preserve the future of these incredible trees. In the meantime, the Nelder Grove is a quiet treasure, a beautiful place for meditation.

The Nelder Grove is off of Sky Ranch Road, about 8 miles off of Highway 140 north of Oakhurst, just a few miles from the south entrance of Yosemite National Park. The last two miles of road are unpaved, but the gravel is well-graded. Our walk was along the Shadows of the Giants trail, but there is a network of trails throughout the grove. The Mariposa Grove in Yosemite is presently closed to visitation as the site is being renovated to improve the visitation experience and protect the trees. Of course when it is finished, the grove will still be visited by hundreds of thousands of people yearly. If you want to see a Sequoia grove the way it should be, quiet and uncrowded, check out Nelder. For more information, check out the web pages of the Friends of Nelder Grove, or this Sierra Nevada Geotourism site.

A Series of Fortunate Events: Chasing Away the Ghosts of Nelder Grove

Not much can kill them. And once they've been killed, it takes a long time for them to go away. There's one in the picture above, can you see it? No, this isn't a post about zombies, it's a story about Giant Sequoia trees (Sequoiadendron gigantea), a tree with a geologic story. The dead tree in the picture above fell several hundred years ago! Despite the high level of precipitation in this forest environment, the wood is practically indestructible.

Two weeks ago we took a walk through Nelder Sequoia Grove, a collection of about 100 mature Sequoia trees just south of Yosemite National Park. I was investigating the grove as an alternative stop on our geology field studies trip last weekend, and it was a bit gloomy that day in the forest. It was actually snowing in the high country, and we worried a little about getting rained on. And the fact that the grove had been logged added a bit to the oppressive feeling of the day.

We arrived a week later, and it was a totally different feeling in the grove. The sun was shining, and the forest was serene rather than gloomy. A grove of Giant Sequoia trees is never a bunch of trees. It's a land of giants with little trees in between.

It's true that 277 of the trees that once lived here fell to the logger's saw, but 100 of them live on, and there are some young trees that will eventually replace those that were lost. Threats still exist of a different kind, threats that we all face. Global warming is changing the climate conditions in the groves, with hotter summers and thinner winter snowpacks. On the day we visited, the trees exuded a sense of permanence, sort of a feeling that they've faced challenges in the past, and they've survived. They'll survive this too, but maybe with a little help from us.

Species related to the Sequoia once existed across the northern hemisphere, The Coast Redwoods of northern California are related, as is the rare Dawn Redwood of China (discovered in the 1940s in a single grove, they are now grown as ornamentals worldwide). Climate change, including the ice ages, probably led to their extinction in most parts of the world. The Sierra Nevada is a tilted block of granitic rock, and the trees survived the drastic climate changes by propagating up and down the slopes of the range. They exist today in 68 or so groves, mostly in the southern Sierra Nevada near Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. There are only four small groves in or near Yosemite National Park, including Nelder Grove, just south of the park boundary. Just three groves exist to the north of Yosemite, at Calaveras Big Trees State Park, and as a small grove of six mature trees in Plumas County.

From the Save the Redwoods League

The Sequoia trees of Nelder Grove are kind of scattered, but a visit to the grove is an exercise in solitude. It's a powerful contrast to the crowded trails of Mariposa Grove and the other groves in Yosemite National Park (Mariposa Grove is presently closed as the park service works to reconfigure visitor access to the trees, in a matter that will be more wilderness-like). If you have the time to follow the winding 9 miles of road (two miles are gravel, but accessible to normal cars), it is well worth a visit.

Time Heals All Wounds. Or Does it Just Hide Them? The Ghosts of Nelder Grove

It's a beautiful place, really. It was one of the most serene places I've been in my travels, away from busy roads, cities, tourist traps, and most of all, crowds. We were only 10 miles from Yosemite National Park on a Sunday afternoon, yet we shared the place today with just six other people, all of whom were quietly looking up as if in a a medieval cathedral.

Sequoia groves are like that. The ancient trees are so big and so tall, so grand, that they seem to inhabit a different universe than "normal" trees. They tower above, like placid gods looking down on their earthly domain. They are the only species in their genus,  Sequoiadendron giganteum. The species, or species very much like it, once grew across the northern hemisphere. Through habitat loss, perhaps related to the ice ages, they disappeared from most of their range. Only on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada have they survived, living in 68 isolated groves, and numbering only in the few tens of thousands (the more widespread Coast Redwoods of northwest California are related, but are classed in a different genus).

We were walking through a mountain cathedral, marveling at the beauty and size of the incredible trees, but I realized there were ghosts all around us. There were only 16 mature Sequoia trees along the trail we were following, but there were dozens of gigantic stumps. This serene forest was a shadow of its former glory. Someone had cut down these forest giants. According to the Friends of Nelder Grove, the entire grove includes just over 100 mature trees spread over 1,540 acres (2.4 square miles). There are 277 stumps hidden in the shadows. Three quarters of the trees that had survived for 2,000 years or more were cut down in a few decades, between the 1890s and 1920s.

The sad part is that the wood, though resistant to rot, is brittle and was rarely used for anything more substantial than grape stakes and shakes, even toothpicks. As much as 75% of the wood went to waste, as most of the trees shattered when they hit the ground. Loggers would build trenches filled with tree branches for the trees to have a soft landing, but to no avail.

The remaining trees have been protected since the 1920s, but they still face some serious threats. The trees are adapted to fire. Their trunks are very thick and do not readily burn, so the wildfires that would burn through the grove every decade or so would kill off saplings of other trees and clear the forest duff, but would rarely kill the Sequoia trees. The nature of the fires has been changing. The policy of the Forest Service for decades was to suppress fires at all cost, allowing the other conifers like White Fir and Sugar Pine to grow very tall, reaching the lowest branches of the giant Sequoia trees.

Sugar Pines are especially susceptible to catching fire, and the fire rises up the trunk into the crown. Crown fires can kill the Sequoia trees by destroying their foliage. So by protecting the trees from fire, we've made it easier for fire to destroy them. The situation has not been helped by the growing effects of global warming. Ongoing drought has led to super wildfires on a scale never before seen in the Sierra Nevada. Several recent fires burned through 200,000 acres or more.

The deep conifer forests threaten the Sequoia trees in a different way. The seedlings need bare soil and sunny conditions to germinate, but the thick forest instead provides shade and thick forest duff. The remaining ancient giants are not being replaced by young trees, not at a rate fast enough to guarantee the future of the grove.

At least we've reached a point where we know what many of the problems are, and steps (sometimes baby steps) are being made to preserve the future of these incredible trees. In the meantime, the Nelder Grove is a quiet treasure, a beautiful place for meditation.

The Nelder Grove is off of Sky Ranch Road, about 8 miles off of Highway 140 north of Oakhurst, just a few miles from the south entrance of Yosemite National Park. The last two miles of road are unpaved, but the gravel is well-graded. Our walk was along the Shadows of the Giants trail, but there is a network of trails throughout the grove. The Mariposa Grove in Yosemite is presently closed to visitation as the site is being renovated to improve the visitation experience and protect the trees. Of course when it is finished, the grove will still be visited by hundreds of thousands of people yearly. If you want to see a Sequoia grove the way it should be, quiet and uncrowded, check out Nelder. For more information, check out the web pages of the Friends of Nelder Grove, or this Sierra Nevada Geotourism site.