Two-Heel Drive, a Hiking Blog

Thumbing though my copy of the The Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Book this morning, I stopped on a page devoted to Andrew P. Hill, a San Jose painter and photographer responsible for securing protection of the stand of old-growth redwoods at Big Basin Redwoods State Park.

This page from a book on the history of Santa Clara County recounts Hill’s efforts. While I was dimly aware that some guys formed the Sempervirens Club to save the trees at Big Basin, I never really knew what was at stake, and Hill’s singular role in saving the old trees.

This was vaguely terrifying to learn: Lumber companies owned all the land now occupied by Big Basin, and the only thing keeping them alive — till Hill came along — was the landowners’ best guesses on lumber demand: presumably they’d never cut more than the market would bear.

And there was the timing: Hill did the deed in 1901. In 1906, the San Francisco earthquake caused a fire that burned the city to the ground. Massive logging operations clear-cut vast swaths of the coastal mountain ranges to rebuild San Francisco. If the quake had happened seven years earlier, there’d most likely be nothing left of the ancient trees at Big Basin.

Hill was a canny operator, well-connected networker and master of the mass media of his time. When he took it upon himself to save the redwoods, he wasn’t even aware of the stand at Big Basin. A botanist had surveyed them all; once the botanist took Hill to see the trees in person, a Cause was born.

Hill bent the ears of everybody who was anybody in the South Bay at that time. He raised money, cajoled legislators, even convinced a San Jose Mercury editor to pen an editorial in the middle of the night to help sway the governor to pass the $250,000 appropriation required to buy the land from the lumbermen. Then he orchestrated a statewide telegram campaign to swamp the governor with electronic demands to save the redwoods.

Hill wasn’t the only guy trying to save the ancient redwoods — the article linked above alludes to a competing save-the-trees bill in the state legislature that might’ve been passed. So maybe he wasn’t the trees’ last hope. But he definitely was their best hope.

The Victorian Preservation Association has another nice summary of Hill’s efforts.

Henry Coe State Park is the only park in the Bay Area that allows camp-where-you-wanna backpacking. All the rest require reservations, and good luck getting a Saturday night at Big Basin or Sunol Wilderness if you haven’t paid for your site a couple months in advance.

If you’ve never been to Henry Coe, be warned: the hills that make the park so wonderful often must be traversed by old fire roads built for combustion-engine vehicles. While the park has a fair number of single-tracks that are nicely zigzagged, most destinations require serious, punishing climbs. This scares off a lot of people, but it leaves more park for the rest of us. Most famous Henry Coe saying: “People don’t come to Coe to train for the Sierra; the go to the Sierra to train for Coe.”

Henry Coe has a bunch of established campsites at Los Cruzeros and Poverty Flat, but these’ll also fill up fast on a weekend. Forget about the prized campground at China Hole on a weekend, somebody always seems to get there first (the other reason to forget China Hole is that it gets well-digger’s-ass cold in that canyon overnight). There’s a nice little campsite called Hidden Spring that I stayed at one autumn weekend a few years back that’s quiet and off the beaten paths. This page at Coepark.org describes all the established sites.

The main advantage of established sites: most have a spring or creek nearby. The main disadvantage: near major trails with lots of hikers and campers tramping through.

Henry Coe’s Hunting Hollow entrance is my favorite trailhead for backpacking — though the remote Dowdy Ranch entrance has its charms (I haven’t tried it yet; it opens May 2 for the 2009 season). Hunting Hollow starts out in a valley where you can either take a gradual slog to the top of the nearby ridges, or you can just pick a ridge nearby and start fighting your way up it.

Camping near Coit and Kelly lakes is an excellent option, though they do attract a fair number of fellow campers (and they require 8 to 10 miles of strenuous hiking to reach them). Also, rangers try to limit the number of campers near the lakes. I camped next to a nice little pond near Coit Lake.

The Grizzly Gulch Trail also has a couple nice ponds worth checking out. I saw a bobcat once along this trail, which is one of the nicest at Coe.

Here’s a Google Map of the major Henry Coe trailheads and lakes.

View Henry Coe State Park Lakes and Trailheads in a larger map

The dot at the upper left is the Dunne Avenue/Park Headquarters entrance. Bottom left is Hidden Hollow; far right is Dowdy Ranch. From top to bottom in the middle are Mississippi, Coit and Kelly lakes.

Henry Coe’s Orestimba Wilderness is worth a look if you’re an ultralighter who can put in over 15 miles in one day.

You’ll want trail maps. Many options at Coepark.org. The big, plastic-coated map most people buy is nice to have, but it’s heavy. They’re available for $8.50 at the Dunne Avenue park HQ.

Henry Coe usually can be backpacked from late October through early June. The rest of the summer will be far too hot, and most of the creeks will be dry. Always ask the rangers about how the springs are running before you head out. You don’t want want to be 12 miles from a trailhead with no water at Henry Coe.

Backcountry camping is $3 a night per person, plus the cost of parking ($5 a day at Headquarters or Dowdy Ranch, $4 a day at Hunting Hollow).

Check out all my backpacking-related posts for Henry Coe.

On a lark I created a Google alert for “Henry Coe” the other day, and it’s unearthed another gem: this one from a guy who calls his blog “Wondering Vet” (Vietnam, not veterinary school). He just got home from a five-day outing at Coe:

I’m drawn to the backcountry by the fishing and the physical challenge; however, while there I appreciate the quiet and peaceful setting. The park consists of rolling hills with oak forests, chaparral, manzenita, and other dry country vegetation. Some of the steep protected canyons are lush with green flowering trees. This time of the year the grasses that cover the hill are dry, although there are a few wild flowers. The golden poppies are obvious and beautiful in this dry terrain. About two-thirds of trails and roads that I covered the are steep, some reaching fifteen to twenty percent or more. Some of roads and trails, especially along dry Orestimba Creek, are comfortable and flat. The steep trails present some challenging hiking that equate in difficulty to those in Sierra Nevadas. Most of the park is semi-desolate. I love the place.

He’s also a philosopher/poet (we seem to get a lot of that in Northern California). In any case, it’s cool to find yet another who appreciates the charms of Henry Coe.

Happened upon this blog post by a trail runner who hiked in and camped out at Henry Coe State Park.

China Hole Trail dropped down to (crazily enough), China Hole, the swimming hole on Coyote Creek. Dodging the ubiquitous poison oak, we made our way along the Creekside trail–one of the prettiest sections of the trail we were on all day.

Creekside is a nice little trail — tricky and challenging in places but worth checking out. The bottom of the post links to the ubiquitous Gambolin’ Man.

I’m doing the big loop at Big Basin to check out the water flow … pix & chatter tonight.

Coepark.org reports that all fire-damaged areas have been declared open again.

Hat tip to Fedak for passing the news along; he’s packing his gear for a couple days of backpacking.

Some part of me wanted to hike all 28 miles of the Ohlone Wilderness Trail in the worst way, which I can safely say includes:

• Hiking in rain and pea-soup fog for the five miles of the trail I’d never seen, so I’ll have to return on a sunny day to see what it actually looks like.
• Camping out in the rain (first law of hydrodamics: water gets into everything).
• Twisting and turn all night because my feet refuse to warm up, which keeps the rest of me from staying asleep for more than 60 minutes at a stretch.
• Next morning, all I have to do is walk 18 miles, with a convenient hike over Mission Peak in the last eight miles just to make things interesting.

Not that I’m complaining.

Idea for this outing came from Steve Sergeant, a Sierra Club outing leader who was the instructor in a class on lightweight backpacking I took last year. Steve took a bunch of us deep into the innards of Henry Coe State Park to demonstrate his techniques for shaving pounds off one’s pack weight. It was an excellent outing, primarily because the weather was perfect and the scenery was wonderful.

This year the weather had other plans.

Three of us started out at the Lake Del Valle end of the Ohlone Trail hiking under cloudy skies. I was carrying about 25 pounds; Frank, the fastest hiker of the bunch, was carrying 27; and Steve, mostly to prove a point, had everything he needed crammed into a 9-pound kit, lighter than most people’s day pack.

That’s Steve in the white poncho. Note that this ultra-thin bit of nylon that isn’t big enough to keep his calves dry also is his tent. His stakes are little shards of aluminum similar to fondue skewers and his guylines are really thick-gauge sewing thread. His whole shelter kit weighs in at well under a pound; his pack weighs less than half a pound — the straps have no padding, but have sleeves to insert a pair of gloves to do that little task. Clever, eh?

All this ingenuity really accomplishes is relocating one’s discomfort. If you can stand to sleep out in the rain under a poncho with your nose six inches from the elements, and dash in and out of camp as fast as humanly possible because all your insulation is in your sleeping bag and hanging around at a campsite freezes your fanny off, then ultra-lighting may be for you.

Steve can handle this because he’s been doing outdoors stuff for 30 years and he’s done all the suffer-on-the-trail, live-it-up-in-camp stuff. Actually, Steve still does these outings too, but our recent weekend was a “fast and light” fling, which meant we were all on a diet, pack-weightwise.

So, back to the trail. The rain wasn’t terrible, but it was pervasive. We got caught on top of a ridge in a bit of a squall — I’m sure I felt a bit of sleet up there — but we were able to hike out of it.

Here’s a little pond along along the way. The blurriness is from moisture on the camera lens. Hard to keep it dry under these conditions.

A combination of fog and lens moisture create an interesting image. This is not far from the Maggie’s Half Acre campsite.

Steve and Frank at Campsite 3. We ended up with three shelters arrayed over that little yellowed patch near the tree. I have a floorless tent that weighs about a pound an a half and is held up by hiking poles. I got it set up as fast I could to get in out of the wind and rain. Amazing what a little shelter will do for your state of mind — and state of bodily warmth.

Next morning it was back to the California skies we know and love.
When I got up, Steve was still sleeping under his tiny A-framed tarp, which was pitched about two and a half feet high, with six inches of open space on either side. I asked him if that was enough shelter. “Just barely,” he said. He’d slept in a narrow cocoon that left almost zero space for twisting and turning, but he stayed warm and dry despite getting splashed in the face a few times. He also said these were the worst conditions he’d camped out in with this poncho-as-tarp setup.

Mind you the weather was cool, wet and rainy, but not terribly severe; going this light can get you in deep doo-doo if major storms — sleet, snow, heavy rains, strong winds — crop up.

We had to pack up and hit the trail ASAP because Steve didn’t bring a hang-round-in-camp coat; we did breakfast a couple miles down the trail when we’d all had a chance to warm up a bit. The scenery markedly improved after the weather front went through.

A fine tree along the trail out of the campground.

Rose Peak, highest point on the trail, just before the sun tops the summit.

Amazing views at this time of morning.

Nice tree-and-reflection scene.

For once I was up here when the sunlight hit these rocks at just the right angle to highlight their coloration. Mission Peak is the little hump in the center of the break in the rocks.

The trail passes through the always-scenic Sunol Wilderness. This on the McCorkle Trail a few miles from the park headquarters.

From here it was a hike over familiar ground — lord knows I’ve posted enough Mission Peak and Sunol Wilderness pix here on previous hikes. The climb up to Mission Peak was a bit of drag, mostly because my legs and back hadn’t gotten back into the habit of carrying extra weight for these kinds of distances.

So those are the highlights. I also have good news for those who love to gaze at wildflowers: they should be out in quantity in the next few weeks.

It’s about 2 in the morning and I’m staring into the black nylon of my sleeping bag. I should be staring out the little hole that makes this a "mummy-style" bag, but my twisting and turning has entered the Olympic realm and by now I’ve got the bag completely reversed — which is nice in that no cold air is coming in and it’s pitch dark, which prevents a shimmering half-moon from keeping me up all night. As I’m trying to drift back to sleep, though, I keep hearing this light scratching sound which immediately convinces me critters are trying to get inside my tent.

Later I realize it’s neither mouse nor marmot no black bear doing the scratching: It’s the sound of my eyelashes brushing against the sleeping bag fabric. I wish I could say this helped me rest easy, but easy rest just doesn’t happen when I attempt to sleep on the ground. Tortured, paranoid, back-wrenching rest, I get a lot of that. Anyway, resting easy is for sissies and besides, you’ll never see the rising sun make a rocky mountainside glow if you’re snoozing away in restful dreamland.

The scene of my latest sleeping-in-the-woods experiment was Emigrant Wilderness, which is just north of Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada range. Rebecca from the North_CA Hiking discussion group asked if anybody was interested in an overnighter in this place called Y Meadow Lake and I was the first volunteer. My calculation was that even if they were looking askance at taking a rookie backpacker into the Sierra, they couldn’t resist the prospect of somebody else doing the driving. So I pressed my new Honda Element (newly redubbed the Hiker Hauler) into service with Rebecca, her husband David and Steve, who rounded out our foursome.

Getting our gear together at the Gianelli Cabin trailhead, the terminus of six miles of gravel national forest road. The road’s in fairly good condition as long as you go slow over the bumps.

David answers the urge to capture some of the scenic splendor from near Burst Rock at the top of the first hill. Our route to Y Meadow took us over three ridges ridges with about 1500 feet of elevation gain over six miles. All of it was over 8500 feet, which made the hike feel more like 12 miles to me. I spent most of the time protecting our group from mountain lion attacks by bringing up the rear.

Steve is trying out a LuxuryLite pack, which has the twin advantages of being extremely light and causing passersby to stare in confused wonder. The pack’s inventor cleverly devised a method to distribute weight more equitably by strapping a pod to the front, which from a certain angle makes its wearer look like he might have a promising future in the adult films industry. (We cautioned Steve to keep an eye out for amorous female bears.)

We passed dozens of snow patches along the way.

Rebecca passes beyond a broken tree.

Lunch break atop hill No. 2. The High Sierra is splayed out under a cloudless blue sky. I’m not sure what could have improved on such a scene, though a cold beer would’ve been nice.

We slogged to the top of another ridge and then picked our way down a rocky trail to the Y Meadow trail, which had quite a bit of snow melting into it in a few spots.

Saw this amazing green plant along the way.

First sight of Y Meadow Lake, with rocky slopes coming up on opposite sides. There’s a dam at the far end.

We camped along the lake. Rebecca is perhaps reflecting on having had the smarts to marry a guy who loves to build camp fires.

David tells Steve, "Man, you look smashing in a bug net." Yes, there were lots of hungry mosquitoes, many of whom seemed to have a particular taste for Steve, who was swatting them whenever he sat still for more than five seconds.

David admires his creation. After hiking six miles at warp speed, he settled in for the serious business of finding dead trees and chopping them into burnable bits with a very large knife that would do Crocodile Dundee proud . David is unfailingly upbeat and cheerful, which are nice qualities to have in a guy who counts knife collecting among his varied interests.

I’m up at 5 the next morning, with a half-moon shining through my tent’s mesh.

Y Lake is icy calm as the sun warms the hillside in the distance.

A snow field empties onto the lake.

Another of those "only at sunrise" scenes.

Not long after we were all out of our sleeping bags, the mosquitos attacked in fresh waves, so we got back on the trail as soon as possible.

Consulting with a forest ranger about, well, something.

Another look at Burst Rock on the way back to the trailhead.

Steve extols the virtues of post-hike pizza.

If you’re interested in trying out this hike, see this page by a guy who hiked there in seasons past.

Rebecca’s pictures are here.

Steve’s pictures are here.

So it was back to the Carr Lake Trailhead at Tahoe National Forest this weekend for a fun three miles to Penner Lake. Scenery was fabulous, especially for whetting one’s appetite for the jaw-dropping vistas of the High Sierra. We weren’t all that high — under 7,000 feet the whole way — but the air was thin enough to give the heart a workout on mild hills. I went with a group who call themselves Nor-Cal Hikers. I’ve been posting to their online forum for the past few months, so I had to show up for an actual hike so they’d know I was a real person and not somebody’s 9-year-old son posing as a balding, 40something white guy who has a bad hiking habit.

Feely Lake is the second lake along the way, after Carr Lake. There were many more along the way, each brimming with cold, clear snowmelt.

Biggest patch of snow along the trail. It’s just slippery enough to remind you you’re walking on little ice crystals.

The afternoon was sunny and hot — toasty enough to create billowing clouds that would evolve into thundershowers before the day was out.

Three of my fellow campers at Penner Lake. From right, Theresa, who organized the hike; her husband, Dale; and Cary, who obeyed the law which states that guys within inches of a shoreline on a Saturday afternoon must wet a line in a quest to snag scaly creatures from the lake’s depths.

He did hook one brook trout and cook it up for dinner.

The hardiest campers proved their mettle by taking dips in the freezing water. Paige kicks back in the hammock while her daughter Taylor tests the waters. I left my mettle at home.

Storm clouds build over the ridge beyond our camp site. Along about this time I realized the folly of leaving my tent’s rain fly at home. I knew it would rain for sure if I left my tent set up and my gear unprotected, so took it down, stuffed everything back in my pack and covered it with my tent’s ground sheet. I figured preparing for rain created excellent karma against rain actually happening; I was only slightly wrong — we got about 10 minutes of rain in big, splashy drops. My sense is some other campers beyond that ridge got a good soaking.

After dinner we attended to dessert for grownups: margarita snow-cones!

Chuck admires the campfire.

Sunset puts on an admirable show of its own.

I took this shot without a tripod, just resting my camera on my knee. Good thing tequila is such a natural born muscle relaxant, otherwise I probably couldn’t have held the camera steady enough.

Self-portrait. That’s my snazzy new hat with built-in bug net. Many a skeeter buzzed around my head in abject frustration.

Predawn, Sunday morning. Last night’s sunset was a warmup for an excellent sunrise.

I love it when my camera bolsters the delusion that I might know what I’m doing.

Alpen glow on the hillside beyond Penner Lack. I was fiddling around tying my shoes or something and looked up for a second and realized this picture had to be taken. A few minutes later a cloud blocked the sun and the glow faded away.

OK, one last sunrise pic and I’ll give it a rest.

I got myself (and fellow camper Karen) lost looking for this water fall, but we got ourselves found without too much trouble.

A fine, stately dead pine tree.

A few observations about this hike:

1. It can get crowded early in the summer. We were told that 21 Boy Scouts were camped across the lake from us, which caused a fair amount of consternation early in the day, considering how noisy boys are at that age. After several margarita snow-cones we were yucking it up in such volume that we were half expecting the Scouts to come over and ask us to pipe down.
2. The trails are not especially well marked: don’t come out here without a map and a compass, minimum; all the better if you’ve got a GPS unit.
3. It’s quite not the High Sierra, but afternoon storms can happen just like in the high country. If you see big clouds building in the distance, get ready for a downpour. Don’t be a dunce like me and assume it won’t rain because the rainy season’s over elsewhere in California.
4. There are lots of places to camp near a place called Island Lake, which is only about a mile from the trailhead. Perfect excuse load up your pack with extra fun stuff (by which I mean, booze).

This is a great place to hike, camp, fish or walk your dog. It doesn’t quite share the jaw-dropping splendor of the ragged peaks you see elsewhere in the Sierra, but it’s plenty nice enough to cause unexpected urges to run away and live in the woods.

UPDATE: Expedition leader Theresa’s pictures are here.

The only thing easy about Henry Coe State Park is the decision to go there. Easy because you can camp out almost anywhere you want without reserving a campsite. The odds are heavily in your favor that you’ll have much of the park’s 55,000 acres to yourself. I hiked 26 miles across two days over the weekend and saw maybe a dozen people. Camped next to pond with nobody but me and some wild turkeys on the opposite bank.

The plan on Saturday was to hike up to a couple lakes about 10 miles into the park — Coit Lake on the north and Kelly Lake about a mile south of it.

I started out about 8 a.m. in pea-soup fog from the park’s Hunting Hollow entrance. Hunting Hollow is in a deep valley between steep ridges; only way to get out of it is up. Easiest way up is to hang a left on the Lyman-Wilson Trail about a three-quarters of a mile from the parking lot. As Coe hills go, it’s not too bad. On a cool moist morning you might imagine that icy-cold Cokes are available in Hell.

I made my way to a place called Wilson Camp. Nothing left of it but a couple old trailers and old cabins. The trailers looked like a good hard shove would turn ‘em into a pile of kindling. The camp may have seen better days, but it’s got a nice privy and a couple springs nearby.

Not far from here is a major trail junction, with one trail, called Wagon Road, heading due north in my intended direction, and another, Vasquez Road, heading northeast and then southeast. I hiked down what I thought was Wagon Road in thick fog and came to notice the strong Pacific breeze was hitting me on the right side of my face, which would be impossible as I was certain I was heading north. Finally I broke out my compass for the first time since last summer and sure enough, I was going south — on Vasquez Road. I got my map out, double-checked my route and started doubling back. Well, at least I hadn’t walked even further.

On the way back it occurred to me that if you’re fogged in and can’t see nearby landmarks — ridges, waterways, mountain peaks, etc. — you’re essentially flying on instruments. Which means if you have instruments — map and compass — you have to actually use them; otherwise you might as well be hiking blindfolded.

Foggy summer mornings are heaven for shutterbugs because we know all the cool cloud formations will show up when the fog burns off.

A representative shot of the Wagon Road trail. It follows a ridge for miles and miles, offering wonderful views of the sprawling, rough terrain. It’s hilly but mild by Coe standards.

White cones of blooms from a tree along the trail.

My favorite snag of the day.

Even the occasional crag decorates the ridge line.

Good weekend for mariposa lilies. Saw a whole bunch of ‘em.

OK, Coit Lake at long last. Three guys were camped on the opposite shore and were floating around the lake in inflatable tubes. This seemed to me to be a violation of a fundamental rule of nature: floating without beer. Unthinkable. (Hauling beer for 10 miles over these hills would have one benefit: you’d never live to experience the hangover.)

I ended up camping next to a pond down the road from Coit Lake. Almost Waldenesque except for my outbursts of profanity when a certain tent pole refused to do as it was told.

Look, Ma, a Quail!

And a bunny!

And a Deere!

So Sunday morning is much like Saturday: more pea soup. Kelly Lake is back there beyond those old trees.

Happened across this really nice campsite not far from Kelly Lake. I’ll camp there the next time I’m out here. Coit Lake is bigger but Kelly is prettier.

The trail up from Kelly Lake is mucho steep. Actually, of all the hiking I did over two days, this was the only really nasty stretch, and it doesn’t last long, a mile at most.

More fog-burning-off scenery.

Lots o’ dandelions going to seed around the park this weekend.

I headed down the Grizzly Gulch Trail, which is one of the prettiest ones I’ve seen at Coe. It’s a little-used trail, grown over in some places, but it tracks down a gorgeous valley full of trees, wildflowers, streams, occasional rock formations. You could probably camp out here for a week and never see anybody.

But you might see the bobcat. I came up over a rise in the trail and saw the tawny, bobtailed feline leap across the trail into the underbrush. There and gone in one second flat. Couldn’t have been more than 20 yards away — my best bobcat sighting to date.

Deer carcass picked clean by buzzards and others carrion eaters (no wisecracks about members of Congress, OK?). I doubt it’s a mountain lion kill, mainly because I don’t think a lion would leave it out in the middle of a rail.

One of a couple nice ponds along the Grizzly Gulch Trail.

More clouds painting cool pictures.

And if they’re framed by a dead tree, all the better.

So which do you like better, pictures of bucolic countryside….

… or pictures of bucolic countryside with dead-tree branches cleverly inserted into them?

This is the broad meadow looking toward the Hunting Hollow entrance to the park. After 14 miles, I was happy to see any hill I didn’t have to climb. (My feet were even happier.)