California Redwood Coast / Humboldt County

The tallest trees on Earth. Coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens, distinct from the giant sequoias of the Sierra) grow only in a narrow fog belt along the Pacific Coast from Big Sur up into southern Oregon — and the biggest of them live here, in the cool wet valleys of northern California. The tallest known tree is named Hyperion, standing 380.3 feet. The NPS keeps Hyperion's exact location secret to protect the soil around its roots; rangers have arrested visitors trying to find it. The top-ten redwoods are all in the 370-foot range. They live 1,500 to 2,000 years on average. The parks themselves are a mosaic — Redwood National Park (federal, 1968) jointly managed with three California state parks (Jedediah Smith, Del Norte Coast, Prairie Creek). Roughly half the world's remaining old-growth redwood forest sits inside this combined boundary, about 40,000 acres of trees never logged. The other half was cut between 1850 and 1968, almost all of it in this same coastal strip. The parks exist because conservationists arrived just in time.

14,179ft stratovolcano at the southern end of the Cascade Range. Last erupted in 1786. Visible from 100+ miles in clear weather — pilots flying north from Sacramento see Shasta on the nose for an hour before reaching it. The mountain is sacred to the Karuk, Klamath, Modoc, Shasta, and Wintu peoples. Glaciers cover the upper slopes; weather forms quickly off the peak.

In the Sierra foothills north of Sacramento, the Feather River is held back by the tallest dam in the United States. Oroville Dam stands 770 feet; an earthfill embankment, not concrete, finished in 1968 as the keystone of California's state water system. It is not the dam itself you pick out so much as the spillway beside it: a concrete chute wider than a twelve-lane freeway running 3,000 feet down the hillside. In February 2017 that chute tore itself apart during heavy runoff and the backup spillway began eroding toward failure; 188,000 people downstream were evacuated, the largest dam evacuation in the country's history. It was rebuilt the next year. Behind it, Lake Oroville rises and falls hard with California's droughts; in a dry year the bathtub ring is enormous.

The deepest lake in the United States — 1,949 feet — and the cleanest, with Secchi depth measurements regularly over 130 feet. Formed 7,700 years ago when Mount Mazama collapsed in an eruption 42 times larger than Mt. St. Helens 1980. The caldera filled with snowmelt and is fed only by precipitation; no rivers in or out. The water is cobalt blue from extreme depth and clarity. Wizard Island in the southwest corner is a cinder cone that built up after the caldera formed. From the air the contrast between the lake and the rim forest is unreal. Crater Lake National Park is Oregon's only national park. Closest field is KSXT Sexton Memorial 50 nm southwest, or KLMT Klamath Falls 35 nm south — KRDM Redmond is 90 nm north for general access.