Stirring walk in the park: Four years after ravaged by fire, Big Basin Redwoods State Park is coming back to life

It’s a life, death and disaster hike. Yet it’s also a stroll in the park.

The route in question is the Redwood Loop Trail, part of Big Basin Redwoods State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains. One lap around the 0.63-mile loop and you’ll see, amid the fading ravages of fire, what a vast difference four years can make in the natural world.

The state park, California’s oldest, is also the largest stand of ancient coast redwoods south of San Francisco. It was 97 percent burned in 2020, when the CZU Lightning Complex Fire erupted in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Tens of thousands of trees were incinerated, and most of the park remains closed, its infrastructure (including 150 campsites) destroyed.

Yet after four years of regrowth, which included drought conditions, followed by atmospheric river storms in 2023, visitors can walk amid countless rising stalks, many reaching 10 to 20 feet high.

“You’ll see shoots of green coming off these black trunks throughout the park,” said Will Fourt, senior park and recreation specialist for the state park system’s Santa Cruz district. Despite early fears, most of park’s redwoods survived, Fourt said, noting that they can resprout not only from their base and branches but also from their trunks — something most conifers can’t do.

By one estimate, just 3 percent of the park’s Douglas fir trees remain.

Among the redwoods, “the new growth that’s coming up from the roots is just amazing. It was just all gray and black here for seven months after the fire,” senior visitor services aide Debbie Martwick said. “It’s so uplifting and inspiring, the resilience of nature.”

The park has been gradually reopening since July 2022, and weekends are busy enough that rangers urge visitors to make parking reservations at least a day ahead (details in box). But on the weekday that I visited, I saw only a handful of other hikers.

Where to walk in the park

Like most, I entered the park’s main day-use area by way of State Routes 9 and 236 near Boulder Creek.

The Redwood Loop Trail is a flat route that includes some of the park’s biggest and oldest trees. You see tiny sprouts inching out of fallen trunks, head-high green shoots overshadowing charred remnants and towering old trees whose branches are greening again, despite jet-black charred bark below. If you stay alert, you’ll also spot a curly redwood standing along the edge of the trail. Unlike all the rest, this tree’s bark has a wavy texture that makes it stand out like a trippy delinquent among honor students — a moment of hallucination along a journey of inspiration.

Hikers looking for a longer route, Fourt said, can take a 4-mile scenic loop that includes portions of the Skyline-to-Sea Trail, Meteor Trail and Middle Ridge Road, returning by the Dool Trail. Remember sunscreen, Fourt added, because the park isn’t as shady as it used to be.

How Big Basin became the first state park

Big Basin Redwoods State Park was created in 1902, as dozens of lumber companies were racing to fell as many tall trees in the region as they could. Local activists bought up 6 square miles of redwood forest, then lobbied state officials for further measures to protect the area from logging. Today, that forest is still dominated by the same trees, some of them more than 300 feet tall and 1,000 years old.

But on Aug. 16, 2020, lightning strikes touched off the CZU Complex Fire, blackening 86,500 acres in and around the park (which covers 18,000 acres). The flames killed one person. Thirty-seven days passed before firefighters could contain the fire.

Today, of the park’s 85 miles of hiking trails, Fourt said, about 6.5 miles are open, with several more miles expected to reopen this winter. Of Big Basin’s 30 miles of fire roads (open to hikers, cyclists and equestrians), about 25 miles are open. It may be years, however, before hikers can again walk the popular Berry Creek Falls Trail and Sequoia Trail.

At the site of the old park headquarters building (built in log cabin style by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1936), cement steps now lead to nothing at all. Its campgrounds aren’t expect to reopen for several years. A new facilities plan is due in 2025.

Before the fire, Martwick said, the park attracted 1 million yearly visitors, who often filled hundreds of parking spots, many of them along fire roads that are now closed. Now the park gets about a tenth as many visitors — 3,000 to 9,000 per month — and has only about 70 parking spaces at its main entrance.

There are chemical toilets, but no potable water, electricity, cellphone coverage or Wi-Fi. In October, park officials joined the Save the Redwoods League in releasing a new Forest Management Strategy plan that calls for thinning the park’s forests in future years by increasing the number of controlled burns (which park managers have been doing for decades).

Seeing the park today “can be dramatic for people who remember the park as it was,” acknowledged Fourt. “But there’s still a lot of beauty there.”

For now, a visit to Big Basin makes sense as part of a trip to the Santa Cruz area, but not as the centerpiece. Fortunately, there are plenty of other things to do nearby, including visiting the city and coastline of Santa Cruz as well as several state parks and the mountain communities of Scotts Valley, Felton, Ben Lomond, Brookdale and Boulder Creek.

Visitors can also check out Rancho del Oso, the coastal portion of the park that lies off Highway 1 in Davenport, about 17 miles north of Santa Cruz. Though Rancho del Oso currently features just three short sections of trail (less than a mile each), the area includes Waddell State Beach (one of the top wind-surfing spots in North America), a welcome center (rebuilt and reopened in 2023), a nature and history center and six campsites.