As an avid lover of waterfalls, even I’ll admit that Trillium Falls is by far not the highlight of its namesake hike. While the cascade is a nice visual break along the trail, the lush green understory and the old growth redwoods are definitely the stand outs.
After spending the previous day at Humboldt Redwoods State Park staring at some very tall redwoods, the Trillium Falls trail in Redwood National Park was our first exposure to very LARGE redwoods. And like neighboring Prairie Creek Redwoods, the understory was incredibly lush with ferns, huckleberry shrubs, and other bushes thriving in the often-foggy area.
The trail begins by going up a hill after branching off the paved path from the Elk Meadow picnic area. As we ascended the hill, we were immediately greeted by a grove of beautiful, large old growth redwoods.
As with any of the redwood parks, there’s a lot of time spent stopping and looking up.
Eventually, we reached the long footbridge that crosses over the unnamed tributary creek and gives you a view of Trillium Falls below. The falls are more of a modest cascade, but are a pretty nonetheless against the lush backdrop.
Shortly after passing the falls is the steepest section of the hike as you go further up the hill, but it’s really not bad at all. Most people probably stop at the falls and don’t complete the full loop, so we saw much less hikers on this portion of the hike.
Another plus to doing the full hike is that the best redwood grove of the trail is near the end of the loop after descending the other side of the hill.
We think the only downside of the hike is how close it is to Highway 101. There are quite a few sections of the trail where you can hear the traffic (but not at the falls). Nonetheless, the tree viewing is spectacular and the forest is beautiful. It’s a great short hike to fit in with another hike on the same day, like we did with nearby Fern Canyon.
