Earendil & Elwing........ring a bell MD?, so you have personally spoke to Steve? If what you say is true????? then you have surely seen one of Gods wonders & are blessed indeed.
LXT..........
Not via phone. I found the earlier post and added "emailed" after "told" for clarity. We communicated via email several times over the period of a week. Once initially, when I wrote that I was sure I could find them, and why. Then later after I found them, a bunch of emails back and forth about how to remove leaked comments that popped-up online.
None of the leaks were really very foolish, and may not have amounted to much as single leaks. But the whole collection of leaks after a period of time let the cats head stick out of the bag. From what Dr. Sillett wrote, they started to discover the potential of the leaks, like a year ago. So I just emailed the ones I found for them to add to their list.
We found the trees when it was even darker than when Sillett and Taylor found them, so I've only clearly seen 2 trees. Until I could measure them, I'm not sure which will be which. Screaming Titans will be one of the easier ones to match a name to a size, and Lost Monarch, since the dimensions have been published and it's virtually the largest of the grove.
I think the trunk diameters of a few others were available, and that's about the only way I think I'd know which tree is which in the grove. Whether a tree in the area is a titan or not, could be figured out. But I don't recall if enough was published to know which ones belong to which names.
Although some clues were leaked, Sillett, Van Pelt, Preston, Taylor and others, were still quite effective about keeping a lot of stuff secret.
It's not exactly an easy thing to describe, but all I can say, is if anyone finds them and sees them in person, they would understand why so few images exist, and why someone would not really say which tree they saw first and why or how expansive the grove is. About the only way to convey learning the location, is to state that the "grove" has been located.
If anyone wants to find them, I say best wishes to them, as long as they keep it secret. If they want to find them, and bushwhack their way to the grove, they have sort of earned their recreation.
The book does not exaggerate the severity of what it's like to go through that forest.
Actually, it's the only forest I've ever been in, where landmarks where virtually useless. That's why I understood the comment from Sillett in The Wild Trees about not being able to return the way they came. They had no compass. But we did have one. So I returned via compass only.
We tried to lock images in mind of old dead stumps and stuff, but there are too many that are similar in some ways, to be able to use them for landmarks. Only two logs of all that we passed eased our passage rather than slowing us. One log enabled us to span over a deep chasm and then get over 100' more of broken debris. And one other log allowed us to bridge through about 200 feet heavy underbrush. I always went in the lead, because I know how to spot poison-oak in winter. Several times, we came up to logs so high we could not begin to climb over them, and had to go up steep hills for a couple of hundred feet to get around the stumps, providing merely 15' of directional progress once all the way around and back - or in other words 400 feet of hard work travel for 15 feet of progress.
That's why I figure, if someone can find them, go for it, and enjoy the forest.
It's still a very cool forest, and I think that most people who would go there and never find the trees, would still enjoy the adventure. It's definitely thicker than north Oregon coastal forest. And the person with me was expecting the forest density and bushwhack to be similar to what we went through in north Oregon - this exceeded their expectations. For me, I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was thicker than what I would have imagined. Primarily the mixture of forest floor debris mixed with undergrowth. Legs punch through the debris into cavities, similar to walking in deep snow - that's about the only way I can describe it. But snowshoes won't work in the redwoods since it's not an even surface.
Maybe LXT could be your lead climber.....
