Walk Your World: stout grove’s back door

Rather than turning off Howland Hill Road onto the parking lot access road, we stopped at twin trailheads 8/10ths of a mile to the east. On the south side of the road is the beginning of Little Bald Hills Trail. On the north side is the entrance to a route called simply the River Trail, a delightful, willowy jaunt south of the summer-shrunken Smith.

It was one of those mornings when inland Del Norte — and I use the word “inland” loosely because we were just south of Hiouchi, all of 10 miles from the coast — warms up early. After descending a couple of sets of wooden steps, we were hit by pockets of hot air as we walked west. The portable heat waves briefly amped up the temperature by at least 10 degrees, but after a wooden bridge crossing of the compact Cedar Creek canyon, we were soon in the shadows of redwoods.

This was merely the welcoming committee. After half a mile on the River Trail we turned left onto the Stout Grove loop and started walking amid the well-known skyscrapers. Another quarter-mile and we reached the junction with the access road from the main parking lot. Needless to say, this is not the place for solitude. In sparsely populated Del Norte, encountering other travelers every few hundred feet seems like a traffic jam.

The real giants kicked in on the next stretch of the loop. On the right, people were taking pictures of themselves in front of Stout Tree – where Herbert Hoover once joined hands with others trying to encircle the tree for a presidential photo opp. By the way, the name of the grove and its signature tree is derived not from its dimension but from the man whose money purchased the area, Chicago businessman Frank Deming Stout.

We soon turned left and departed the loop for a second side-trip, this one leading over a summertime footbridge across Mill Creek and onto the rocky riverside. A much larger seasonal bridge crossed the river. We could have reached the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park campground from here, but instead retraced our steps to complete the Stout Grove loop and regain the River Trail back to Howland Hill Road.

The entire journey covered maybe two miles, but we’d gained first-time views of the Smith and crossed summertime bridges soon to be disassembled. All in all, a fine way to visit Stout Grove without setting foot in its parking lot.

TRAIL NOTES

THE HIKE: An alternative entry to Stout Grove loop using the River Trail off Howland Hill Road and throwing in a second side-trip across Mill Creek and the Smith River on seasonal footbridges.

HIGHLIGHTS: Those side-trips afford nice views of the Smith, and the old-growth behemoths on the loop are what make Stout Grove one of Del Norte’s premier attractions.

SWEAT LEVEL: This walk is short and on the level, and some freakishly hot pockets of air on the River Trail don’t last long enough to inspire perspiration.

GETTING THERE: Driving from the west, take U.S. Highway 199 past Hiouchi, turn left to cross the middle and south forks of the Smith River and take Douglas Park Drive 1.6 miles to the trailhead off Howland Hill Road. An alternative starting point would be the Jedediah Smith campground – as long as those seasonal bridges are up.