What is the oldest tree in Olympic National Park?
Olympic National Park holds trees nobody has ever dated, but the oldest one with a name, a trail and a sign is the Kalaloch cedar, a western red cedar of roughly a thousand years, off Highway 101 between Ruby Beach and Kalaloch. Estimates for it run from 800 to 1,200 years. Half of it came down in a storm in March 2014; the standing half is alive, in slow decline, and reached by a flat trail of a few hundred feet from a signed roadside pull-off.
Olympic National Park comes in three parts: mountains, rainforest and a long coastal strip. This tree is on the coastal strip, on Highway 101 between Ruby Beach and Kalaloch, and reaching it costs nothing. The Big Cedar trail leaves a signed roadside pull-off and runs a few hundred feet, flat, to the tree. The access road has potholes and is passable in any car. The nearest services are at Kalaloch Lodge a few miles south, and there is no public transport on this coast. Go knowing what is there. The dimensions this cedar is famous for, close to six metres through and about fifty three metres tall, date from before March 2014, when a coastal storm split the trunk and brought down roughly half of it. Nobody has published a remeasurement since. What stands now is a great damaged column, alive but declining, with the fallen half beside it. The signs at the tree cover the damage and where it is sensible to stand, and they are current guidance rather than history.
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