Muir Woods

May 2025

This was my third visit to Muir Woods, but the first in my increasingly last-in-first-out photo processing queue. My longest Muir Woods walk by far, as we hiked up to Cardiac Hill via the Dipsea Trail and back down Stapelveldt and Ben Johnson (trail guide).

It is not, in reality, anything like as dark as this under the canopy of the redwoods on a bright May day, but I was wearing dark and red-tinted sunglasses and was keen to recreate the experience by underexposing my photos too.

It’s called Cardiac Hill, because, obviously. We shared it with people running the Stinson Beach marathon:

View from Cardiac Hill

If you ascend Dipsea and then go down Stapelveldt / Ben Johnson as we did, you have to do the ascent mostly in the sun, but then you get to do the return in the shade:

Moss, Muir Woods Sunlit redwoods, Muir Woods Redwood canopy, Muir Woods Fern uncoiling Forest floor, Muir Woods Sunlight, Redwood Creek, Muir Woods

All photos.