California's Redwood National Park is home to some of the largest trees on earth. A particular hike will bring you up close ...

On a gentle slope above a trail junction in Sequoia National Park, about 7,000 feet above sea level in the southern Sierra Nevada, looms a very big tree. Its trunk ... any coast redwood or eucalypt.

Grabbing huckleberry roots and clumps of sword ferns, I hauled myself and my 60-pound pack up its organic wall onto a trunk ... forest. From the southernmost redwood in Big Sur to the northernmost ...

but the dawn redwood is actually deciduous, and before it loses them, its fronds turn a lacklustre rusty-bronze colour. As impressive as the trunk is, the real show is this tree’s branch structure.