James Irvine trail is a 5 mile long trail located in Redwood Prairie Creek State Park in Northern California. This trail head starts at the visitor center and goes all the way to the coast. This trail is considered as a difficult trail due to its length but the trail itself does not have much elevation gain. The trail was quite wide as well and easy to walk on. On this trail, it also intersects with Miner's Ridge trail and many other smaller trails that you can take or loop back to visitor center.
We started on this trail early in the morning since the trail is quite long. To our surprise, we did not see many people on the trail. This is probably due to the length of the trail. There are times that we had to go across the river on a bridge. Compare to other trails in Redwood forest, James Irvine trail is less exciting to hike on. There isn't any special scenery other than trees, trees, and more trees. Although the trees are huge, tall, and beautiful, it starts to irritate us as we hike down this 5 mile long trail. Since completing a 5 miles long trail is a big accomplishment and we do want to get to Fern Canyon, we continued on.
We did not take any break in between since the trail itself is pretty flat and easy. It is just pretty long. We did see a few people taking a rest on the side to catch their breath. After 2.5 hours of hiking, we finally got to the end of the trail near the coast. It was a relieve! We stayed there for an hour or so to have some snack and re-energize ourselves.
Unfortunately James Irvine trail is not a loop trail. So we had to walk back on the same path. There were other trails that we could take to get back to visitor's center, but it would take more time. Heading back to the visitor's center was not too bad. We were able to walk a lot faster and got back within 2 hours. It was a great accomplishment!
Overall, this trail is not that exciting. For people visiting Redwood National Park, this would be one of the trail that you can skip if your schedule is tight. However, if you would like to do a long hike, this is a good trail to do so.
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