For Zach Shein, hiking the Bigfoot Trail was never simply about walking from one end to the other. It was, in many ways, a 300-plus-mile pilgrimage through one of the most remarkable conifer landscapes on Earth.
A Trail Built Around Trees
Zach describes becoming “obsessed with trees”—especially conifers—several years ago. When he eventually learned about the Bigfoot Trail, with its extraordinary diversity of trees woven through the Klamath Mountains, it quickly became a trail he knew he wanted to walk.
This summer, he made it happen.
Heading north from the Yolla Bolly country, Zach encountered the full personality of the Bigfoot Trail: faint tread through immense burn scars, brushy ridgelines, steep climbs, poison oak, long stretches of solitude, and places where following the route required equal parts map-reading, ecological intuition, and perseverance.
Following the Conifers
There were also plenty of rewards.
Shasta fir. Brewer spruce. Port Orford-cedar. Engelmann spruce. Jeffrey pine. And, high on Packers Peak, foxtail pines—a moment Zach called one of the highlights of his entire journey.
At one point, after realizing he had passed an opportunity to see several tree species he had traveled across the country to encounter, Zach actually turned around and hiked back. As he put it, he was doing this “ridiculous trail that specifically goes the craziest route to see the most trees,” so he might as well go see them.
That pretty well captures the spirit of the Bigfoot Trail.
A Few Bumps in the Road
The journey wasn’t seamless.
Zach lost the trail at times, pushed through recently burned landscapes, navigated thick vegetation, dealt with poison oak, and eventually had his phone fail after it got wet in Clear Creek.
That forced him to alter his route through the Siskiyou Wilderness, hike out to a highway, hitch into Crescent City, repair his phone, and then get himself back onto the trail.
And he kept going.
Endurance, Curiosity, and Adaptation
Long-distance trails are rarely about everything going according to plan. They are about adaptation, curiosity, endurance, and continuing forward when the landscape—or life—changes the route.
Zach brought all of those qualities to the Bigfoot Trail, along with a wonderfully deep curiosity about the forests he was moving through.
He is now adding many of his observations to iNaturalist, helping build our understanding of the remarkable plants and changing landscapes along the trail.
Walking to Meet a Tree
Thanks, Zach, for taking on the Bigfoot Trail, for paying such close attention along the way, and for reminding us that sometimes the best reason to walk a very long way is simply to meet a tree you’ve never met before. 🌲🥾
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