California is home to some of the biggest trees in the world. Redwoods, Douglas firs and Sitka spruces that tower over the lush forests of the north coast. Giant sequoias of incomprehensible girth scattered across disparate groves of the Sierra Nevada. Stately sugar pines stretching skyward from the shores of Lake Tahoe, their massive cones dangling from disheveled branches.

By any measure, the Golden State is a veritable wonderland of arboreal giants.

For this reason, it should come as no surprise that California is also home to some of the world's leading forest researchers. Renowned big-tree hunters the likes of Michael Taylor and Stephen Sillett, whose pioneering feats of redwood discovery are documented in the 2007 book The Wild Trees. Tree-climbing aficionados such as Anthony Ambrose and Wendy Baxter, whose South Lake Tahoe nonprofit, The Marmot Society, is devoted to studying and protecting the state's ancient forests. And the Sugar Pine Foundation, a South Lake Tahoe nonprofit committed to fighting the devastating effects of white pine blister rust.

These experts seek to not only find, measure, study and preserve the tallest and most iconic trees on the planet, but also to illuminate the outsized role the organisms play in monitoring the health of entire ecosystems. They live for the thrill of the find and the sheer love of large old-growth trees, which are increasingly under threat and in need of assistance across a warming, wildfire-ravaged landscape. With any luck, their passion and efforts will help keep these natural wonders alive long after we are gone, inspiring future generations with their longevity and grandeur.

Pinus lambertiana, better known as sugar pine, has a range that runs through the inland mountains from Baja California all the way to Oregon. While they are not as big as the coast redwood or giant sequoia, they are the tallest known species of pine. The trees often grow up to 200 feet tall, though the most impressive specimens, many of which can be found in the Sierra Nevada, are far taller.

Michael Taylor has tracked down record-breaking sugar pines for nearly two decades and, since 2014, has reported his findings to the Sugar Pine Foundation.

Taylor co-discovered the tallest known sugar pine, a 273.74-footer dubbed Tioga Tower, in Yosemite National Park in 2015. In October 2020, he located the second, third and sixth tallest sugar pines in the world with friend Duncan Kennedy. Those trees, all found in the Tahoe National Forest on the western slope of the Sierra, measured 267.5, 267.15 and 263.7 feet, respectively. The biggest of the bunch, which Taylor named the Redonkulous tree, is 10.3 feet in diameter at breast height and an estimated 500 years old. Coincidentally, Taylor also discovered the tallest known white fir, standing over 261 feet, in the same general area west of Lake Tahoe.

"I always loved trees as a kid," Taylor says. "I love big, giant trees. The bigger and taller, the better."

In his three decades as a big-tree hunter, Taylor has discovered dozens of the world's largest trees. These include the tallest known tree on earth, a coast redwood named Hyperion in Humboldt County, which measured 379.1 feet when Taylor co-discovered it with Chris Atkins in 2006 (the tree has since grown to 381 feet). In 2021, Taylor and Tressa Gibbard of the Sugar Pine Foundation co-discovered the tallest known Sitka spruce, standing 328.5 feet over the coastal forest of Northern California. And, this year, Taylor and Sillett located the second tallest Douglas fir, at 326 feet, also near the Northern California coast. (For perspective, the Statue of Liberty is 305 feet tall.)

In this way, what Taylor really means when he says that he loves big trees is that he loves finding big trees. It is not enough to know that they exist amongst thousands of acres of other giants. He wants their exact coordinates and measurements.

There is, however, a conundrum at the heart of hunting down the world's tallest living organisms. Once a tree has been found, climbed and measured, the only piece of information to remain confidential is, in fact, the specimen's precise location.

"Unless someone has a need to know, we tend to keep them a secret," Taylor says.