Guest Tree: Quinault Lake Cedar

Quinault Lake Cedar, W. Siegmund, 2005

The champion tree highlighted in this post is not one of Vancouver Island's big trees, although it is close as the crow flies. The Quinault Lake Cedar can be found across the Straight of Juan de Fuca in the Quinalt Lake Rain Forest area of Olympic National Park, Washington, USA.

Like Canada's largest tree, the Cheewhat Lake Cedar, the Quinault tree is of massive, human-dwarfing proportions. For comparisons sake, the Cheewhat tree is 5.84m (19.2ft) in diameter, 55.5m (182ft) tall, and 449 cubic meters (15,870 cu. ft.) in volume.

The Quinault Lake Redcedar

• Description: Thuja plicata 
  The largest known Western Redcedar, in the world with a wood volume of 500 cubic meters (17650 cu. ft.). It is 53.0 m (174 ft) high with a diameter of 5.94 m (19.5 ft.) at 1.37 m (4.5 ft.) above the ground. (Van Pelt, Robert, 2001, Forest Giants of the Pacific Coast, University of Washington Press.)
• Viewpoint location: Near the northwest shore of Quinault Lake north of Aberdeen, Washington, about 34 km (21 miles) from the Pacific Ocean. It is near Higley Creek in the southwest corner of Olympic National Park.
• Viewpoint elevation: 400'
• View direction: North    - wikipedia

View Western Redcedar National Champions in a larger map