California's 5 Most Ethereal Trails In Redwoods National And State Parks, According To Reviews

California's peerless coast redwood trees (officially known as Sequoia sempervirens) reach heights that almost defy belief — until you're lucky enough to see them in person. As the tallest trees on the planet, these silent giants frequently ascend to over 350 feet above the forest floor. The mythical, foggy, seaside forests of Northern California's coast are rich in extraordinary hiking opportunities among these botanical wonders, from the easy (yet astonishing) fairytale forest hike along the Rockefeller Loop in Humboldt Redwoods State Park to the somewhat forebodingly named Damnation Creek Trail. And yet, while extraordinary redwood hikes are found in several amazing state parks and nature preserves along the Northern California coast, the best trails for seeing these extraordinary titans in person lie in Redwood National and State Parks.

Redwood National and State Parks consists of one national park site jointly administered with three California state parks: Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Together, these national and state park sites form a singular UNESCO World Heritage Site ecological preserve, protecting both the tallest trees on Earth and the complex and delicate environment that thrives below them.

Obviously, the Redwood National and State Parks preserve is filled with some truly unforgettable hiking trails. And while every trail in the entire national/state park joint complex is fully saturated with scenery that looks straight out of a fantasy movie, these five trails in particular tend to draw the highest acclaim from reviewers on AllTrails.com for their ethereal views, photogenic features, and complete immersion into one of the world's most important forests.

The Lady Bird Johnson Grove has long been one of the more popular hiking destinations in Redwood National Park — and with good reason. Named after First Lady Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson, wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson and long-time environmental advocate, the Lady Bird Johnson Grove protects a particularly gorgeous forest of towering redwoods, surrounded by an understory of lush Douglas firs, rhododendrons, azaleas, and big leaf maples. One notable quality that sets the Lady Bird Johnson Grove apart from other redwood forests is its elevation. The forest sits on a ridge that rises around 1,200 feet above sea level. As a result, the forest gets more rain and atmospheric moisture than other areas of the park, creating a misty "rainforest" effect that looks particularly magical.

The Lady Bird Johnson Grove Trail is one of the best hikes in Redwood National and State Parks, with hikers on AllTrails noting its uncrowded nature and "stunning" scenery that's "nothing short of magical." Despite its otherworldly views and higher elevation atmosphere, the Lady Bird Johnson Grove Trail is a fairly easy and family-friendly hike, covering only about a mile and a half over mostly flat and well-maintained paths. There are over a dozen stops along the relatively short route that provide deeper insight into the forest's miraculous ecosystem. During a self-guided nature walk, Lady Bird Johnson Grove Trail hikers pass remnants of past forest fires that help renew the forest, redwood saplings growing from the trunks of their deceased ancestors, and panoramic, sun-drenched canopies that reveal how these mighty giants thrive off of California's ample sunlight. The trail's parking area is helpfully located near Highway 101, though you'll want to note that the parking lot cannot accommodate RVs and larger trailers.

Virtually all Redwood National and State Park trails showcase the phenomenal trees that give the park its name. However, many also highlight other notable natural features, adding another layer of ethereal beauty to the already fantastic landscape. This is certainly the case with the "incredible" and "epic" (to quote AllTrails reviews) Trillium Falls Trail. Similar to the Lady Bird Johnson Grove Trail, this is a comparatively easy, family-friendly hike through an ecologically diverse old-growth forest setting. In addition to its ample galleries of fir trees, maples, and ferns (and, of course, redwoods), the Trillium Falls Trail is also rich in its namesake, the trillium flower, which adds a vivid smattering of white, yellow, and purple to the forest's heavy greenery.

The trail's central feature, however, is its eponymous Trillium Falls. On paper, it may not seem like much compared to other famous waterfalls, as it only reaches a height of a mere 15 feet as it cascades down Trillium Creek. But while it's not quite one of America's top Niagara Falls alternatives, Trillium Falls' ravishing frame within a divine redwood forest makes it one of the most picturesque waterfall hikes in any redwood forest.

The hike to Trillium Falls and its bridge overlook is about half a mile. From there, hikers can either turn back or continue on to complete the full 2.6-mile loop; either way, you'll end up back at your car. The Trillium Falls trailhead is also close to the park's lovely Elk Meadow Day Use Area. Elk Meadow not only adds an open, meadow-like complement to the dense forest setting, but it also gives hikers excellent opportunities to see the animal the area is named after — the park's thriving population of Roosevelt elk!

Though the name "Tall Trees Grove" may seem a bit uninspired, trails don't get points for naming creativity, and, its less-than-creative name aside, the Tall Trees Grove Loop is one of the park's most extraordinary artistic masterpieces. The Tall Trees Grove is found in one of the more remote regions within Redwood National and State Parks, near an intersection of Redwood Creek and Tom McDonald Creek. As a backcountry area, this area is harder to access than the Lady Bird Johnson Grove and Trillium Falls Trails (though one AllTrails reviewer notes that the location requires "enough effort to feel meaningful when you arrive...but still pretty easy"). However, this challenging, remote location also means that the Tall Trees Grove has some of the world's most ancient redwood trees, many of which have been growing undisturbed for thousands of years.

The name "Tall Trees Grove" itself, though fairly rudimentary, is actually quite an apt description, as its resident trees have grown into record-breaking heights. Two of its trees, the 363-foot Howard Libbey Tree and the 373-foot Nugget Tree, both held the record for "tallest tree on Earth" for several years (that record currently belongs to the 379-foot Hyperion Tree in a restricted region of the park). Even today, Tall Trees Grove contains a dense concentration of many of the world's tallest individual trees, with several exceeding 350 feet.

Once you get past the obstacle of getting there, you'll find that the Tall Trees Grove Loop is a moderately challenging, 3.7-mile hike past many of the area's notable trees that also circles past the beautiful Redwood Creek. Because it's a protected backcountry area, hikers will need to make a free reservation for access, which can be done online through Redwood Parks Conservancy.

With so many amazing forest settings, visitors can forget the Redwood National and State Parks also contain several equally beautiful sections of California's coastline. Though it's not quite the warm, "lounging" beach you'd expect to find in Southern California, Redwood National Park's "short but beautiful" Enderts Beach is an isolated photogenic gem that blends the deep greenery of Northern California's coastal forests with the everlasting blue of the Pacific. The 1.3-mile hike to Enderts Beach is likewise a sublime jaunt through this magnificent natural setting, with the forest's towering redwoods and ravishing fir trees on one side and the Pacific waves crashing along a scenic rocky coastline on the other.

The trail begins with the panoramic views of the Crescent Beach Overlook and from there follows a mostly seaside path down along the park's coastal forests before finally twisting inland to the Nickel Creek Campground. While awe-inspiring scenes of redwood forests are something of a given in Redwood National and State Parks, the Enderts Beach Trail also provides the unexpected thrill of exploring marine attractions just feet away from the mighty trees. The waters just offshore are excellent places to spot California gray whales, and the beach itself is a prime spot for tide pooling.

The Enderts Beach Trail largely follows a segment of the much longer California Coastal Trail, a planned (though still unfinished) long-distance hiking route that will eventually connect many of California's coastal trails into one epic hike along the state's 1,200-mile coastline. The portion of the trail along the Enderts Beach Hike showcases the immense redwood and oceanic beauty of Del Norte County. Plus, Enderts Beach hikers can also access California's prominent redwood coastal gateway of Crescent City, where you'll find abundant lodging, dining, and sightseeing options.

Having opened in 2010, the Berry Glen Trail is one of the newer hikes in Redwood National and State Parks. Though the trail itself is new, its scenic features are anything but. This particular trail was designed as an addition to the network in Lady Bird Johnson Grove and the Elk Meadow Day Use Area. As such, the Berry Glen Trail circles through the same ethereal forest scenery as the Lady Bird Johnson Grove Trail, passing majestic redwoods, exquisite Douglas firs, and carpets of bright green ferns, all enveloped in a damp, high-altitude rain forest environment. Though this particular trail hasn't been open as long as others on this list, its route retraces actual historical paths taken by Native Americans, settlers, and gold miners over several centuries.

While the Lady Bird Johnson Grove Trail is a popular and well-photographed hike, the 5.7-mile Berry Glen Trail highlights some lesser-known sights within the broader Lady Bird Johnson Grove area while still offering plenty of "beautiful, ethereal trees," "lots of ferns," and a "shaded, well-marked" route, according to AllTrails reviews. Three miles of the loop consist of the new Berry Glen Trail, which covers a more open section of the grove's old-growth redwood forests that are prone to more sunlight than other, denser areas.

The Berry Glen Trail is also unique because it's one of the park's few west-facing hiking routes, which provides it with a haunting and mystical layer of fog in the summer. Altogether, these factors lead many hikers to rank the Berry Glen Trail as being even more scenic than the neighboring Lady Bird Johnson Grove Trail, though its greater length and steeper climbs also make it more challenging.

The quality of being "ethereal" is largely subjective, whether you're applying it to a hiking trail or anything else. Even if there were some objective measurement for a trail's "ethereal" qualities, that measurement would likely apply to virtually every trail within Redwood National and State Parks. After all, the very reason why this particular stretch of redwood trees is protected by both the National Park Service and the state of California is because of its commonly agreed-upon beauty. Because of this, we had to determine a slightly more objective methodology in compiling a list of the top five "most ethereal" trails in Redwood National and State Park.

For this task, AllTrails.com proved an invaluable resource. AllTrails' comprehensive list of trails within any one park helpfully includes aggregate user reviews, trail descriptions, and communal photos. Even better, the site allows you to see a full list of all of the trails in a particular park,ranked according to cumulative reviews. While this ranking (like all user rankings) takes into consideration factors other than aesthetic beauty, the AllTrails ranking of Redwood National and State Park trails did prove to be a useful starting point for compiling this list.

Additionally, AllTrails.com's user reviews and helpful review summaries allowed us to identify specific characteristics on each trail that drew particular attention from reviewers. In choosing the five trails to feature, we were able to see that they were all both positively reviewed overall and drew particular praise for their beautiful qualities.