Do Not Visit The World's Tallest Tree!

Thinking of Visiting the World’s Tallest Tree? Think Again.

The National Park Service restricted the area around Hyperion, a coast redwood in California's Redwood National Park, after visitors and climbers left behind garbage and human waste.

Hyperion, pictured above.
You can read more about Hyperion at famousredwoods.com
There they have detailed instructions on how to access the tree that is currently off limits.  You must stay 1 mile away from Hyperion for the foreseeable future.

For hundreds of years, a coast redwood tree (Sequoia sempervirens) known as Hyperion has stood quietly among its fellow giants deep within Redwoods National and State Park in Northern California. Inaccessible by trails, 900+ year old Hyperion, can be reached only by hiking through heavy vegetation and crossing a sometimes wet river.

Still, a flood of travel bloggers, tree enthusiasts and recreational climbers has managed to do so—and has damaged the surrounding undergrowth in the process. As a result, the National Park Service has closed off access to Hyperion, which, at 379.1 feet tall, is the world’s tallest living tree.

Follow Phillip

@majikphil

Hyperion is the tallest of three trillion trees on Earth. Naturalists Chris K. Atkins and Michael W. Taylor named the tree after the Greek Titan Hyperion, "The High One," brother of Kronos and Rhea and father of Helios. Tom McDonald Creek is also known as Fog Creek, and the surrounding valley is also known as Fog Canyon and Hyperion Valley. Hyperion is also the 7th largest tree in Redwood National Park. Hyperion's crown, 298 ft (90.9 m) tall, is one of the deepest redwood crowns yet measured and contains an estimated 550 million leaves.

Now, under a rule adopted this year, anyone who gets too close could face up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

“I hope people understand that we’re doing this because our eye is focused on protection of resources and safety of the visitors,” said Leonel Arguello, the park’s resource manager.

Mr. Arguello said the Park Service’s decision to establish the rule limiting access to the tree had come after an increase in people forging their own trails and climbing the tree. Large amounts of garbage and human waste had also been found in the area.

Under the rule, which took effect in March people will be prohibited from getting within a mile of the tree, Mr. Arguello said. The Park Service will regularly send out rangers to patrol the area, he noted.

The tree’s remote location makes it difficult for emergency medical services to access, Mr. Arguello said.

Mr. Arguello said no one had been arrested or fined yet as a result of the new rule. He added that while $5,000 was the maximum fine under the rule, park rangers would likely initially ask trespassers to leave the area or issue a $150 ticket.

Redwood trees are among the tallest and oldest trees on Earth, and their existence dates back to the Jurassic period some 200 million years ago. Hyperion was discovered in 2006 by two naturalists and confirmed by Stephen Sillett, a redwood expert, at Humboldt State University.  Mr. Sillett is the Chair in Redwood Forest Ecology of the Department of Forestry & Wildland Resources at Humboldt State.

There is a certain irony to Hyperion’s popularity, observers say.

Despite its “champion height,” it is not worth the trek, according to Mr. Arguello: From close up, you can see only the first 150 feet from the ground. Above that, only the bottom of branches are visible.

“It's the most unimpressive tree you’ll ever see,” he said. “I’ve worked at this park for 33 years now, I’ve seen most of the old growth in this park, and this particular tree is not that impressive at the base. It’s just really tall.”

He added: “When you can’t see the top 150 feet of tree, it doesn’t really matter how tall it is.”

But the mystery of what stands above that bottom 150 feet is in part what draws some visitors.

Young redwoods have a conical shape, said William Russell, a professor of environmental studies at San Jose State University. But as they get older, the trunks mature into a cylindrical shape with thick branches toward the canopy making them “really appealing to climbers,” Mr. Russell said.

Climbing any of the park’s trees for anything other than research is prohibited. But Mr. Russell said he had been hearing about recreational climbing in Redwood National Park for a number of years. Illicit climbing is “really problematic” for the tree and its surroundings, Mr. Russell said, but “climbers are the least of it.” Climate change and commercial logging remain perpetual pressures on the fragile system, Mr. Russell said.

Redwoods require moisture from coastal fog to keep their canopies damp. “The more coastal fog you have, the better off you are as a coastal redwood,” Mr. Russell said. The tops of trees like Hyperion are fragile ecosystems, Mr. Russell said: The crowns are more drought-stressed and also rich with entire mini-forests of vascular plants and nests of marbled murrelets, an endangered seabird.

Lucy Kerhoulas, an associate professor of forest physiology at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, described monument trees like redwoods, spruces and Douglas firs as competing in “an arms race for light.” But the microsite of a particular tree—its soil composition, species and site location— can make all the difference in its height. Hyperion is near a creek and on a protected north-facing slope.

Ms. Kerhoulas has noticed an increase in “loving the trees to death” when it comes redwoods, but for hikers hoping to see a “glamorous, tall, jaw-dropping” tree, she said the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park was “a much better use of time and energy.”  Jedediah Smith Redwoods contains 7% of all the old-growth redwoods left in the world and the park remains mostly pure and primeval.  

You can’t get Zac Efron’s body. And you shouldn’t try.

“Former teen star talks body image” wouldn’t be a surprising headline in and of itself. But it’s definitely different when that grown-up actor looking back is a man — as Zac Efron, he of “Baywatch”-reboot fame, did in a recent Men’s Health profile.

In it, we learn of Efron’s overtraining, his restricted eating, his taking of diuretics to shed water weight and look ripped. “I started to develop insomnia,” he recalls, “and I fell into a pretty bad depression, for a long time.”

That frankness feels like a bit of a watershed in an era in which actors have been strenuously honing themselves to meet the sort of narrow beauty expectations normally reserved for women. When Hollywood and social media have created a newly unobtainable standard for a rising generation of boys, it’s about time men and boys heard what feminists have long argued: Not everyone can contort themselves to achieve some bizarre ideal, and there are real dangers to trying.

Physical metamorphoses, of course, have long been part of the actor’s life and feature heavily in award-season narratives — though they’re often hailed as a form of art, not as a how-to manual.

The Ideal Hollywood Hero Body
Men's Health October 2022

When Christian Bale lived on about 200 calories a day to achieve a skeletal physique for “The Machinist,” the public admired his dedication but didn’t emulate it. Robert De Niro gained nearly 60 pounds in four months and walked away with an Oscar for “Raging Bull.” This year, Brendan Fraser is getting accolades for his performance in “The Whale” — in which he plays an isolated, grieving man who is eating himself to death — partly because the stigma against overweight people is still so intense that it’s considered brave for an actor to beef up.

But that’s all separate from body-as-ideal — the kind that has supposedly been “perfected” through dedication and discipline, and becomes an aspiration for others.

A lot of what you see is cgi, and then there is genetics.  Chris Evans is obviously genetically gifted, but did you know he was also, infamously, covered in tattoos?

Mr. Evans broke the internet with this instagram video showing his many torso tattoos.  See more at BuzzFeed "People are just finding out Chris Evans is Covered in Tattoos"

Back in 2011, Chris Evans acknowledged that training to play Captain America in Marvel’s superhero franchise meant living with persistent discomfort. “Every guy I know” who tries to get superhero-big “has some sort of freak injury in their body,” Evans told Men’s Health. A decade later, that candor didn’t prevent the magazine from offering readers insights into how they could replicate Evans’s regimen.

Even as they’re packaged as self-improvement content, these stories of transformation often leave something out. Chris Pratt began his career as a lovable, soft-bodied comedic actor before losing 60 pounds in six months to transition to action roles. On Instagram and in character on “Parks and Recreation,” he joked that the change was the result of giving up beer. But there was more to the story, involving a strictly monitored diet and intensive workouts with trainers, all neatly replicated in a guide for readers of Muscle & Fitness.

Also genetically gifted is Ryan Reynolds.  But does he always look like he did in The Amityville Horror?  Probably not.  Below Ryan's many tattoos (along with one in the process of being removed from his forearm).

Ryan Reynolds' tattoos above, and mid-process tattoo removal below.

Chris Hemsworth, who got huge to play the Norse god Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has a sideline as a fitness entrepreneur. He posts workout videos to Instagram and runs Centr, a subscription service that promises users they can “transform your health, fitness and mindset with Chris Hemsworth’s team of world-class experts” — starting at “just $10” a month.

Although this trend has escalated in recent years, it has been building for some time. The standard for on-screen male shirtlessness rose in tandem with superhero movies after the turn of the century. A decade ago, the journal Pediatrics found that nearly 6 percent of middle and high school boys had experimented with steroids. Today, social media provides a feedback loop, letting ordinary teenagers turn themselves into fitness influencers.

Brad Pitt's Fight Club Body Revisited
Men's Health October 2022

Then there’s the potential role of steroids and human growth hormone in all this bulking up, a subject that is much discussed in Hollywood, but rarely above a whisper, and only then to suggest that someone else is sampling the forbidden fruit.

This is why it’s refreshing to hear blunt talk from high-profile stars about what it actually takes to achieve physiques that are themselves special effects.

“I wouldn’t recommend anyone do what I did,” Will Poulter said about training for his role as the genetically altered superhuman Adam Warlock in the forthcoming “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” His regimen, he added, which involved gorging and fasting to build mass and drop water weight, is “unhealthy and unrealistic if you don’t have the financial backing of a studio paying for your meals and training.”

The top look (from Dirty Grandpa) is certainly more desirable than the bottom look (Baywatch), pictured here with Ellen Degeneres.

Efron goes further, suggesting it’s not just the process that is undesirable, but the results, too.

“That ‘Baywatch’ look, I don’t know if that’s really attainable,” he told Men’s Health. “There’s just too little water in the skin. Like, it’s fake; it looks CGI’d.”

One interview can’t overpower the superhero movies dominating global pop culture. But Efron’s honesty is a welcome starting point for a conversation about male body ideals — what so-called perfection is worth, and what cost is too high to pay for it.

Originally published in the Washington Post as You can’t get Zac Efron’s body. And you shouldn’t try. by Alyssa Rosenberg