The Hoh Valley grows Sitka spruce to exceptional size, with the largest specimens exceeding two hundred and fifty feet tall and several feet in trunk diameter. The species thrives in the valley's mild, fog-rich, high-rainfall coastal climate, achieving some of the fastest growth and largest dimensions found anywhere in its range.
Pick out the tallest, straightest trees crowding the road, the ones with the silvery, scaly bark. Those are Sitka spruce, and this valley grows them about as big as they get anywhere on Earth. A Hoh spruce can push past two hundred and fifty feet and run wider than your car at the base. They love exactly this, a mild, soaking, foggy valley with its feet near the coast, and they pack on wood at a rate that would shame a tree almost anywhere else. The deeper you drive, the bigger they get. The real monsters are waiting at the end of the road.
Photo: Kimon Berlin (KimonBerlin) · CC BY-SA 2.0
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