The Miners' Ridge and James Irvine LoopIncluding Gold Bluffs Beach and Fern CanyonLength 11.6 mi · Climbing 1350 ftCalifornia > Redwood National and State Parks > Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park
The Miners' Ridge Trail Background
This is one of the world's best redwood hikes, but it's not just the redwoods that make it great. Although much of the trail does pass through superb redwood forest, the most spectacular redwoods are concentrated at the beginning and end of the hike, so you could actually see the best redwoods without hiking the entire trail. That would be a mistake, though, since what really makes this hike great is the way it unfolds through a variety of environments, passing from a redwood-lined ridgetop, to an undeveloped beach, and finally through a lush creek valley.
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The Miners' Ridge trail starts with a climb through a spectacular redwood forest. The first mile of this trail, which is at its best in the morning light, is especially magnificent. Prairie Creek is one of the few places where such large redwoods can be found on a hillside. Most of the trees have a light greyish-colored bark which is less imposing than the darker trees found on the flats - the Prairie Creek uplands have their own unique color palette, light shades of grey and yellowish-green. Around the high point of the ridge, huckleberry shrubs line the trail. Sometimes on still days the faint sound of traffic from Highway 101 can be heard, but once the trail crests the sound is replaced by the distant roar of the ocean. Soon the trail reaches an intersection with the Clintonia Trail. Hikers looking for a shorter (6-mile) loop can turn right and follow the Clintonia Trail downhill, first through a rather unattractive spruce wood and then through some very nice redwoods, to the James Irvine Trail. This short loop includes the best redwoods of the hike, but you'd have to be nuts to take it — you'd be skipping the beach and Fern Canyon, the two things that that give this hike its exceptional variety and transform it from merely great to world-class. After the Clintonia Trail intersection, the Miner's Ridge Trail winds around an especially scenic ravine lined with towering trees and filled with the sounds of the surf. At a sharp right-hand turn, the trail leaves the old-growth redwoods with surprising abruptness and enters a logged area. The contrast between the bright, lush old growth and the dense, gloomy second growth is striking. Fortunately, the patch of second growth is only a few yards long and the trail soon enters a spruce forest. The air gets noticably cooler as the trail descends through the pine woods toward the ocean. The trail ends at a dirt road. Here you can turn right and walk up the road to Fern Canyon, or, better, turn left and proceed 100 yards to a campground, where you can cut through to the beach. In winter it might be advisable to take the road if you don't want to get your feet wet (see below). Walk down the beach as far as the Fern Canyon parking lot. It can be a slow and tiring slog through deep sand, but this is one of the most memorable parts of the trip. There are very few people on the wide beach. No signs tell you when to turn inland, and a barrier of brush prevents you from reaching the beach road anywhere except at the Fern Canyon parking lot, which is not visible from the water's edge. If you're not careful you can miss the parking lot and get lost. If it's a sunny summer weekend, just walk until you run into some people standing around on the beach, then turn inland and you'll find the parking lot. If the beach is deserted, look for a pair of notches in the bluffs. The less-pronounced southern notch is Fern Canyon. Turn inland just before you reach the southernmost notch and you should find the parking lot. Shortly before the parking lot, the sandy beach gives way to coastal grasslands and there's a creek (actually the outflow from Fern Canyon) crossed by some crude planks. A herd of elk often grazes here, wallowing in the creek and relaxing among the white-bleached driftwood. This is undoubtedly the most scenic place in the park to view elk, and it also lets you get much closer to the elk than the prairies along highway 101. In general the elk seem to be pretty relaxed around people, although they have been known to chase visitors. The creek changes from year to year; sometimes there's no water at all, other times (especially in the winter and spring) you may have to wade through about 12 inches of water to reach the parking lot. Especially after heavy rainfall it may be a good idea to hike the entire loop in the opposite direction. That way, if the creek is too deep, you can take the dirt road without having to backtrack for a mile.
The Miners' Ridge Trail The hike passes through Fern Canyon, which is a striking sight with its sheer vertical walls lined with ferns. The canyon walls start off low but get higher as you get further into the canyon; at its peak the canyon is taller than it is wide. The canyon meanders pleasingly, each bend bringing a new little vista. The stream that flows through the canyon could make it difficult to pass through in the winter, in which case take the alternate route just north of the canyon. Seasonal footbridges are installed in summer so that you can walk through the canyon without getting your feet wet. Soon the canyon opens up again. A set of stairs climbs out of the canyon to join the James Irvine Trail, but if you're willing to get your feet wet and climb over some fallen trees you can also keep following the stream on an unmaintained dead-end trail. After a short distance, the path turns left and enters a mini-Fern Canyon with the same vertical fern-covered walls as the full-size version, but at half scale. Soon after entering the mini canyon, the trail gets narrower, more overgrown, and less worthwhile. Back at the stairs, climb out of the canyon to join the James Irvine Trail, which leads uphill alongside a burbling creek through a serene and very scenic forest, crossing several strikingly narrow and deep gorges. At times, hiking here feels more like walking through a well-kept garden than an ancient wilderness. For much of its length the trail is on the hillside, elevated slightly above the creek valley. The woods here have a much different look than the ridgetop redwoods of the Miner's Ridge Trail - darker, lusher, more ancient. Somewhat surprisingly, the redwoods here in the bottom of the creek valley are not all that large or dense; maybe the valley is too marshy. At first the redwoods are mixed with spruce, which seem to grow better along creeks and near the ocean. A heavy carpet of ferns covers the ground, and spanish moss drips from trees. The spruce disappears and redwoods dominate again as the trail begins to descend toward Godwood Creek. The trail used to follow the burbling creek through an engaging landscape of marshy lowlands with increasingly impressive redwoods. However, this alignment was causing the creek to silt up, so the trail now climbs back up to the Miner's Ridge Trail instead. The new route has more redwoods, but the scenery is a lot like what you saw earlier in the hike.
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