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The Redwood Creek Trail

Length 15.4 mi · Climbing 500 ft

California > Redwood National and State Parks > Redwood National Park

The northernmost mile and a half of the Redwood Creek Trail is the most scenic

Background

Easily accessible from Highway 101, the Redwood Creek Trail is the second most-visited trail in Redwood National Park, after the Lady Bird Johnson Trail. Despite its name, though, the trail has few old-growth redwoods: although the first few miles of the trail pass through unlogged forest, the redwoods don’t really grow along the creek where the trail is.

The most scenic and popular part of the trail is the first mile and a half, up to the first creek crossing. From this point on the trail is still attractive but a bit monotonous, and it’s visited mainly by backpackers. The trail is very quiet and peaceful, and easy to hike. While you can’t usually see the creek, you can hear it throughout the hike.

The Redwood Creek Trail

Redwood Creek is the only place in the park where “dispersed camping” is allowed. There’s no campground; backpackers can camp anywhere they like along wide gravel creekbed as long as it’s upstream of the first creek crossing and at least a quarter mile away from the Tall Trees Grove.

The trail is mostly level and well-maintained, so if you can hike for 7–8 hours straight it’s possible to hike the entire trail in a day. Some enjoyable alternatives include:

Walk to the first creek crossing and back (3 mi round trip)
Hike to Elam Camp, and from there ascend a side trail into hillside old-growth redwoods (7.8 mi round trip)
Hike the entire trail to the Tall Trees Grove, then camp overnight on Redwood Creek; return the next day
From Elam Camp, take the Three Day Loop and then cut back to the Redwood Creek Trail using the unofficial trail mentioned below; after visiting the Tall Trees Grove, take the Redwood Creek Trail back. The horse trail isn’t quite as scenic, but it adds some variety and it does briefly dip into an interesting and remote band of old growth along Bond Creek.

The trail crosses Redwood Creek twice. Seasonal footbridges are installed sometime in June and removed in September. Ironically the bridges aren’t really needed during this period since the creek is only 12–18 inches deep in the summer. In the fall and spring it might be possible to ford the creek, but during the winter rains the creek becomes a raging torrent and can’t be crossed.

Click map to show all roads and trails
Part of the Trail Map of Redwood National and State Parks (Redwood Hikes Press, 2021)

Hike description

Here’s the trailhead location in Google Maps.

The first stretch of trail is well-maintained, wheelchair-accessible, and surfaced with gravel. It makes a very pleasant stroll. This portion passes through a wide alluvial flat lined with a leafy, open forest of red alders, Douglas-Fir, and maple, with a few clusters of old-growth redwood. There’s also a very nice grove of moss-covered spruce. Open meadows covered with an impressively dense, 3- to 12-foot-tall layer of blackberry brambles provide views of the redwoods on the surrounding hills. The unseen creek burbles in the distance.

Spruce grove on the Redwood Creek Trail

At 1.5 miles the trail crosses Redwood Creek on the first of the two summer-only footbridges. Looking out over the creek, you can see old-growth redwoods towering above the layer of regular-height trees that grows along the banks. It's possible to camp on the banks.

Redwood Creek

After the first creek crossing, the forest closes in around the trail and the scenery gets somewhat monotonous. The trail is not as well maintained in this area; the first mile or two is especially narrow, but then it opens up again. In the shoulder seasons when the bridge is not installed but the river can still be easily forded, the trail becomes overgrown but is still passable. To your right, up on the hillside, are some interesting glimpses of old-growth redwoods. Occasionally a big redwood appears on the side of the trail, most notably a striking group containing two gnarled monster trees and one slightly smaller, straight tree. As the trail approaches Elam Camp it briefly climbs into a full-blown old-growth forest.

Optional side trip: At 2.6 miles, a trail branches off to Elam Camp. The camp itself is in a rather dismal logged redwood grove. For a nice half-mile to one-mile side trip, take this trail, pass through the camp, and look for a little-used trail to your right that leads steeply uphill. It might look like the trail just leads to the toilet, but in fact it continues on through an old-growth redwood grove, climbing 1.1 miles to meet up with the McArthur Creek Loop. The lower part of the trail has a somewhat sparse scattering of mid-sized, dark-trunked redwoods among a very dense understory of alder, huckleberry, tanoak, and rhododendron. The redwoods become smaller as the trail climbs. Near the top, after passing through a logged area dense with thin trunks, the trail abruptly emerges into a much more open redwood upland populated with tall, straight, light-colored redwoods; this is the most scenic part. The hike from the Redwood Creek trailhead to the McArthur Creek Loop and back is a 7.8 mile round trip.

Back on the Redwood Creek Trail, continue heading south. Tall, thin white-barked alders lean out over the fern-lined trail; there are also a few isolated old-growth redwoods along the trail and some logged redwoods as well.

A large, high footbridge that used to span Bond Creek has been removed; instead the trail now descends into the ravine and then climbs out again. A mile further, a second long, high bridge, which is badly deteriorating (it’s missing some of its planks and handrails), crosses the lush fern-lined gully of Forty-Four Creek. The big, dramatic footbridge and the gully with its little waterfalls is one of the more memorable parts of the trail. Between the two bridges, an unmarked path that starts next to a bench to your right provides a connection with the horse trails and (in about a half-mile) to an attractive old-growth upland grove. Although it’s not officially maintained, this trail usually seems to be in good condition, better in fact than some of the official horse trails.

The bridge over 44 Creek

Approaching the end of the Redwood Creek Trail, you’ll climb to an intersection with a trail to 44 Camp, a quiet but not very scenic campsite amid logged redwoods. After this intersection, the trail descends through a dismal logged redwood grove before emerging from the woods to cross Redwood Creek again. There’s a seasonal footbridge; after the bridge has been removed and before the autumn rains start, the crossing is usually about 12 inches deep.

On the other side of the creek, the trail enters the Tall Trees Grove. Walking among the big redwoods after the long hike up the creek gives you a real appreciation for how extraordinary this old-growth grove really is.

Related websites

Real-time flow chart for Redwood Creek. A ranger at Kuchel Visitor Center told me that fording the creek is not recommended when the discharge rate is above 400 cubic feet per second. At this rate the creek is about 18 inches deep and very fast at the Tall Trees Grove.