Two-Heel Drive

From my column in today’s Mercury News

Skyline Ridge is one of a string of preserves managed by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District along Skyline Boulevard in the Santa Cruz Mountains crest west of the Santa Clara Valley. The main attractions are Alpine Pond and its nature center, staffed by volunteers on weekends. A wooden walkway allows close inspection of life at the pond’s edge, and there’s a drinking fountain nearby to refresh your water supply.

This one’s always a fave. Previous Skyline Ridge hikes here.

A reader e-mails to ask where hikers from Marin might want to live if jobs oblige a move to the South Bay. Just to make it interesting, the reader asks, could it also be at least somewhat affordable? Well, that takes Palo Alto, Saratoga, Los Altos (and Los Altos Hills) out of the picture but hey, who wants to live around all those dull moneybags anyway (just because they have better jobs, sexier clothes, bigger houses, faster cars and their very own poolboys, it doesn’t make them superior to the rest of us, right?). A few thoughts, based on my travels and home-hunting experiences:

In San Jose

Berryessa: This neighborhood on the east side of San Jose is close to Alum Rock Park and seems mostly unpretentious and perhaps less pricier than other parts of town (kiss the Rose Garden goodbye, for instance). It’s near the trolley line, if that matters, and it’s close to I-680, which means easy access to the Santa Cruz Mountains on the weekends (Steve Sergeant lives there, if you need any further encouragement).

South San Jose: I’ve heard there are housing deals to be had in the south end of town. The neighborhoods around Santa Teresa and Almaden Quicksilver county parks would be worth a look, though I suspect there are fewer deals around Almaden Quicksilver.

Elsewhere

Santa Cruz Mountains: Scotts Valley, Felton and Ben Lomond along Highway 9 are remote enough that there’s not quite as much demand for housing as you might expect, which could make them affordable. Of course then there’s the gas to drive over Highway 17, and the risk from taking your life into your own hands every day in the process and hoping the daily fender-smasher always happens to somebody else.

Fremont: OK, so it has no downtown and it’s mostly sprawl central. But it’s a pretty quick jaunt down to San Jose from there, and it’s right between I-880 and I-680, and it’s not so far from Coyote Hills Regional Park, which remains one of my favorite hang-outs (more for the birdwatching than the hiking, which isn’t especially challenging). I wouldn’t rule it out.

Milpitas: Also close to I-680, a bit less pricey than the South Bay, but suffers from the tract-house mania that infects so much of the region. This page lists lots of hiking opportunities nearby.

Mountain View: Not exactly cheap, but very close to the Santa Cruz Mountains. A careful consumer might be able to luck into a good housing deal (though Fedak, who lives there, tells me the unremarkable house across the street from him is on the market for $1.3 1.6 million).

Campbell: I always pass it on the way down south on Highway 17. It has a cool/funky (by South Bay “Empire of the Geeks” standards) downtown shopping strip. Housing might be a bit more affordable, though I haven’t really shopped it myself.

Sunnyvale: Some of my favorite hikers (Winehiker Russ and Mike and Kathy of the FOMFOK hiking club) live there; it’s close to I-680 and Highway 85, which offer easy access to most of the prime hiking areas. Little ’60s tract houses in Mike’s neighborhood were going for 700k, the last I heard, but I wouldn’t rule out finding deals here and there.

So those are the first ones that spring to mind. I know some of you live in the South Bay, so how about chiming in?

(Those of you from the rest of the world are forgiven for wondering how we can afford such stupendous prices for housing; I just imagine that I’m on vacation all year, which helps reassure me when I can’t afford to take one somewhere else.)

The cool thing about Wilder Ranch State Park is how you get from one side to the other: Tunnels under Highway 1 connect the coast to the backcountry. The map shows two intended for human traffic, and those who’ve been following along will already know that if there is a third, deeply inadvisable tunnel to the other side, it will be the one I find first.

This is the right tunnel, which connects the Ohlone Bluffs Trail to the Baldwin Loop Trail. I noticed it from about a half-mile away, satisfied that I’d found my way to the other side after about three hours of making my way up the coastline. Then it faded from sight after a bend in the trail.

I turned left on the first trail that seemed to be going in the proper direction, expecting to see the white-framed tunnel, above. Instead I got farther and farther down an old ranch road till I hit a little stream, with a large, concrete-lined tunnel under the highway off to the right. Naturally, I had to splash blindly all the way to the other end (good news: GoreTex works!) before I concluded beyond all doubt that it couldn’t possibly be the correct tunnel. Then I had to splash blindly all the way back, all the while expecting either a) snakebite from a bathing rattler; or b) attack from a rogue Vietcong tunnel rat.

I know what you’re thinking: I walked up four miles of gorgeous coastline, past two beaches known for attracting naked sunbathers, and the best I’ve got is this wrong-tunnel routine?

Sorry, God can’t always provide nudists on command (even though it would encourage timely prayer, though I suppose praying for prune-skinned, potbellied old white guys to put some damn clothes on doesn’t really count.)

But anyway, the story on Wilder Ranch, for those who’ve never been: The coastline is pretty, though perhaps only an 8 on a 10-point spectacular-vista scale. The Marin Headlands and Point Lobos are nicer. The backcountry is mostly open in an area where you’d expect a redwood forest. If you don’t mind walking in the blazing sun and stepping aside for mountain bikers (I don’t, actually, but I know some people are finicky), stringing together a beach/backcountry hike is most likely the best way to experience Wilder Ranch.

So, let’s see some pictures from Sunday:

The main thing is to avoid the urge to get right up to the edge of a cliff for a peek at what it looks like down there. It looks like a beach, OK? And now I’ve saved you from an untimely demise. Hey, it’s what I do.

There are many seabirds.

And Canada geese with their goslings.

There’s much agriculture nearby, though most of the tractors are in better condition.

I think if I were an artist I’d title this “Canadians at America’s Edge.” Or something.

A bit of continent makes a determined stand against the ocean. Let’s be nice and think for a second that it stands a chance.

Coastside daisies (note to all you keepers of wildflower pages, could you please add this one? It took me a half-hour to figure out what it is).

Lots of false lupines blooming.

This is Four-Mile Beach — which must be much farther than four miles by trail from the park HQ because it took me three hours to get there. OK, I took some detours and I walk at a crawl but I’m not that slow. Depending on the breaks, Four-Mile is more like six.

So, if you go this route in a grand loop, you take the Ohlone Bluffs Trail all the way back to Highway 1 and turn left when you see a “Trail” sign with a hiker icon. It goes down a little single-track and the tunnel shows up in a couple minutes. If it doesn’t, you might be on the way to my wrong-turn tunnel.

Once you get to the other side via the proper tunnel, you pass somebody’s farm house and wander up to the Baldwin Loop Trail. I didn’t really know which way I wanted to go, so I just turned right at the first single-track trail that seemed to be heading in the approximate direction off the park HQ.

I ended up on a trail nearly overgrown with tall grass and flowering weeds.

This was where I figured meadow hiking isn’t so bad, if it’s a nice meadow. It helps to have cool Pacific Ocean breezes.

Eventually this little spur reconnects with the Baldwin Loop Trail, which makes its way up the hillside, where I found a junction that led to the Twin Oaks Trail, which worked its way back down the hillside and connected with the Wilder Ridge Trail, which went back to the HQ. Saw lots of wildflowers on this side, among them:

Lots of miniature lupines.

And these interesting weeds, which I couldn’t identify.

Forget-me-nots blooming in a rare shady area.

A blue-blossom bush along the Wilder Ridge Trail.

More of those false lupines.

One last look at the backcountry terrain, before taking the other correct tunnel back to the HQ.

So that’s Day One. I’ll have to go back next weekend to explore more of the backcountry for Day Two.

Selected Wilder Ranch links:

• Yelp.com user reviews.
• Jane Huber’s Bay Area Hiker page.
• California State Parks page.
• Virtual Parks page with QuickTime VR panoramas.

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I spent Sunday at Wilder Ranch State Park, a couple miles north of the Santa Cruz city limits.

The rest of the pictures are here.

I’ll chat up this hike later, but I figured I’d throw some pictures up for y’all to gaze upon.

There’s a rarely traveled corner of Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve where the trail goes deeper and deeper in to the woods, the grass gets taller and taller, and then, ultimately, the trail fades to nothing.

I hiked this trail last spring (see Deep in the woods of Purisima) and it still sticks in my mind as one of those wonderful trails known to almost nobody, that gets you to a place distinctly unlike everywhere else.

Here’s a map of the trail:

Click here for a larger version.

Here’s a nest of caterpillars I saw way back in there:

The hike starts out at the Tunitas Creek Road trail head, a few miles west of Skyline Boulevard.

You work your way over to the Bald Knob Trail to the Irish Ridge Trail — passing through some excellent stands of redwood along the way — then take the Lobitos Creek Trail till it fades into the forest, then retrace your steps. About eight miles and change, from the looks of the map. Download the PDF of the whole park here.

Our group didn’t see any other hikers out this way, even though it’s one of the best hikes in one of the best hiking locales in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Jane Huber’s Bay Area Hiker page tells how to get to the trail head. (If you’re too lazy to click: it’s about two miles west of Kings Mountain Road-Skyline Boulevard intersection).

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This’ll be a fine place to check out as the weather warms, though you may want to get out there sooner to see the expansive views to the ocean; it tends to get fogged in later in the summer.

Please add your favorite trail-to-nowhere suggestions in the comments.

I never tire of the Marin Headlands. I drag all my visitors to see them — I even took my Mom up there in the middle of a blinding rainstorm (”there’s a spectacular coastline over there,” I promised, pointing to a fog bank). Melissa and I took her Mom to Fort Cronkite to watch the surfers on Christmas Day one year.

About the only thing I hadn’t done at the Headlands was hike, an omission somewhat corrected on Sunday. Last Thursday I’d gotten a “guess what I’m in town” e-mail from Rick McCharles of “Best Hike” fame (Rick has a hiker in every port), so I decided to take Rick to the Headlands as well. Last time we did an excellent 10-miler at Mount Tamalpais; this time we threw ambition to the wind and mostly wandered around, soaking up the view, doing only as much hiking as circumstances required. Which was not much, with so much scenery to distract from one’s trekking duties.

May as well let the pictures do the talking:

The classic “Golden Gate Bridge from Battery Spencer” shot. This is just beyond the first parking area you see as you head up the hill into the Headlands. From that lot, you can also walk down to the ocean along the Kirby Cove Road, a fact I overlooked while we were stopped here, so that classic hike got left off the itinerary.

Next up, we parked near Hawk Hill, which has an impressive 360-degree panorama. This shot looks north toward Fort Cronkite.

Rick engages in the quirky behavior that endears him to trekkers the world over.

That’s Point Bonita — we checked out the lighthouse there awhile later.

I’m pretty sure Calla lilies are non-native, but they are nice to look at.

I like images where bridge cables parallel the slope of the nearby hills.

Another north-looking shot, this time from Battery Mendell, which is where you run out of continent when you drive through the Headlands.

OK, on to Point Bonita, which has this very impressive jagged rock face nearby (wish I had an equally impressive picture).

The tunnel to the Point Bonita lighthouse is locked behind a steel door most of the time, but Park Service volunteers open it on Saturday, Sunday and Monday afternoons from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. — note to visitors: if you go right at the opening, you’ll encounter a line of people waiting to get across to the lighthouse, which is very small and doesn’t have room for many people. Better to get there a little later in the afternoon.

Only two people are allowed on the old bridge to the lighthouse, which creates a traffic jam initially because you have to wait for people coming and going. Also, once you get over there it’s a lot windier, and hence chillier; dress appropriately.

A poster shows all the ships whose crews encountered a certain sinking feeling after having run into the continent .

Inside the lighthouse.

With the lighthouse tour finished, we wandered over to Fort Cronkite to hike a bit of the Coastal Trail.

The stunning, jagged coastline never quits.

We walked along some ragged old chain-link fence that used to warn people they were wandering too close to essential military operations. Which, it turned out, were essential only to the profit margins of the defense contractors who built all the now-decaying installations in the Headlands.

Those are the highlights. Bottom line: The Headlands are far better for gawking than hiking. Riding a bike might be as much fun or more. Checking out the Point Bonita lighthouse is a must, as is, I’m sure, the Kirby Cove hike we skipped. It’s probably a bit too crowded and tourist-infested for the Global Hiker Elite of which we all members, but there’s no denying it’s got the most spectacular scenery per square foot of any Bay Area locale.

Marin Headlands links:

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Santa Teresa, wildflower and mountain biker hub of south San Jose, gets the treatment.

The park at San Jose’s southern edge is a magnet for mountain bikers who delight in molar-rattling rides along the rockier trails. Riders were out in force on a recent Sunday, perhaps hoping to get in some trail miles before throngs of flower-gawking hikers began stalking Santa Teresa’s sunny, open terrain.

Read the whole thing.

My pal Vindu Goel is jetting off to Brooklyn this weekend to launch his new life as an tech guru for the New York Times, but he had to get one last Henry Coe hike out of his system. Not content to amble down to Frog Lake, soak up the sounds of woodpeckers and breezes floating through the tall Ponderosa pines, and stroll back along the gentle, lovely Flat Frog Trail, Vindu craved the Legendary Ass-Kicker of Coe: Mount Sizer.

I did the same hike in the winter of 2007, which made me the de facto guide — which usually guarantees at least an hour wandering blindly in the wilderness, but there are only two ways to get to Mount Sizer, the 3,182-foot summit of Blue Ridge. One requires climbing up the deadly Hobbs Road Short Cut (consensus pick as the steepest Bay Area trail); the other requires climbing 2,000 feet over about five miles via the Poverty Flat Road and the Jackass Trail, then descending the Short cut and enjoying 2,000 feet of climb over four miles back to the park HQ.

An out-and-back to Mount Sizer is 13 miles; the counter-clockwise loop we did is 14 and change; there’s 4,000 feet of elevation gain, minimum, regardless of route; a protracted climb of four or five miles at the end is unavoidable.

What’s also unavoidable: the conclusion that this is among the few Bay Area hikes which must be done, and not just to prove how much punishment your lower extremities can withstand. On clear days in the winter you can see all the way to the High Sierra from the trail near Mount Sizer. Right now there’s abundant evidence of the massive Lick Fire, which torched over 45,000 acres of the park last year. The Jackass Trail cuts right through the burn zone in a few places.

It’s one of the wildest places in Northern California you can reach on foot and get home in time for dinner. You’ll want a good meal — though most rigorous hikes dampen the appetite, this one is so extravagantly draining that the hunger instinct will running flat-out within an hour or so.

Enough chatter, let’s see the pix:

Vindu admires the view near the turn-off to Jackass Trail. If you go this way, note that the trail is very faint, though more hikers will no doubt beat it down some more in the next few weeks. It’s a bit hard to follow at times, but just keep in mind you’re heading up the spine of a ridge — as long as you keep going upward you won’t stray far from the trail.

Burn damage starts showing up almost immediately along the Jackass Trail.

The trail follows this drainage through a burned-out area.

Inevitably, the green is already returning. The winter rains washed way most of the soot, leaving brown hills and the twigs that were the bases of dense shrubbery that practically explodes into flames when fire comes through. The burn exposes how how much these plants dominate the landscape — it’s a thick green carpet of vegetation no human could ever hope to traverse without a bulldozer, but the fire burns off all that biomatter and leaves a rugged landscape waiting to be reborn.

Like this, in other words.

Vindu finds our place on the map on the road that ends the Jackass Trail. It’s easy to know which way to go: just head uphill.

Bluedicks with burn damage in the background.

This stand of Ponderosa Pine looks a bit scorched.

Mount Sizer summit itself is, frankly, unremarkable. It has a radio tower of some sort at the top, and a little spur trail leading up to it. Why hike to a place that isn’t worth the trouble of taking a picture? Mainly because this hike is so much greater than a single high point on a ridge. We have to name it after something.

So this is Booze Lake, where the Lick Fire started.

We paused for lunch at this bench at the top of the Hobbs Road Shortcut — a relentless 1.4 miles that’s only marginally less draining than going up it.

Lupines sprout on the Short Cut. A little beauty is welcome on this beast of a trail.

Once you get down to Coyote Creek, it’s advisable to rest up and prepare for the last four miles uphill to the park HQ. It’s a slog, no doubt about it, but it offers a tutorial on taming the beastly hills of Coe: Set a pace, slow down when you tire. Purge all thoughts of the hill ever ending; such thoughts add psychological duress to the strain on your feet and legs, and you don’t need any more difficulties.

Here’s the Short Cut from across the ridge on Hobbs Road. Not many switchbacks along this route.

After about two miles of climb, Hobbs Road goes downhill for about a half-mile, crossing a creek at a trail junction that gives you two choices: 1.5 mile back to the HQ on Hobbs Road — and another 600 feet of climb — or 2.9 miles along Flat Frog Trail, one of the nicest single-tracks in the park.

Vindu said he was up for either one, but he hadn’t seen the Coe Monument, which requires the shorter, steeper route. So, up we went again. After all the climbing we’d done already it didn’t seem like that big of a deal, but it was brutal nonetheless.

One more shot of the monument — I always have to take a picture when I’m up here.

After that it was a quick dash back downhill to the park HQ, and after that it was back to town, to send Vindu off to new journalistic vistas. Here’s hoping he gets a few weekends off to climb some of those hills upstate.

My Henry Coe links:

• Sizing up Mount Sizer: Same hike, last year.
• All Coe Day hikes.
• All Coe overnighters
• Mercury News park profile

Other Henry Coe links

• David at Random Curiosity did the Sizer out-and-back in February.
• California state parks page.
• Pine Ridge Association
• Wildflowers of Henry Coe
• Bay Area Hiker.

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I’m scouting Skyline Ridge for a future column, and because you really can’t go wrong hiking there. It has ponds, easy trails, varied terrain, and a fair amount of wildflowers. Russian Ridge is far less sexy for the hiker purist — few single single tracks, hardly any shade — but it does get an impressive bloom in the spring. It seems to have twice as many species of flowers as Skyline, which is right next door. We’re not getting the carpet-of-color effect we like to see, but if you like to putter around and take pictures of blooming things, it’s worth a look (just bring your sunscreen).

I also bumped into Mike and Kathy of the FOMFOK hiking club at Russian Ridge and strolled along with them for a couple miles. When I got back to the car I had an excellent conversation with an 86-year-old Swedish hiker who was resting in the shade of her car’s trunk: it was a bit hot out there. Her hiking club has been together 35 years. I got the feeling she’d been over every mile of the Santa Cruz Mountains about six times. If you ever needed more proof that hiking not only adds life to your years, it adds years to your life…

Let’s check out some pictures:

One of the first shots of the morning, on a south-facing slope in direct sun … I thought this was blue-eyed grass, but it didn’t look especially blue under these conditions. I’m told now it’s a variety of filaree.

Miner’s lettuce has delicate white blooms that are hard to capture without a tripod because the lettuce grows in the shade.

Alpine Lake, gorgeous as usual. The nature center here opens at noon on Saturdays and Sundays … lots of cool stuff for kids to look at in there, including skins of dead critters.

On to Russian Ridge, where most of the flowers were:

Checkerblooms bloom in big pink clumps over here.

Yours Truly at the top of Borel Hill.

A yellow violet — these are hard to photograph because they’re kinda shy and don’t face upward toward the sun all the time.

OK, maybe there was more single track than I remember. It’s a decent year for poppies, but they’re not dominating the hillsides around here. Also, forgot to mention: a controlled burn was conducted here last year and all these hillsides looked like toast at the time. A fire is just a haircut for grass; it grows back stronger the next season.

Miniature lupines, near as I can tell. These are very small blooms that require shooting in macro mode and hoping the breezes let up.

Traffic jam. The FOMFOK folks are heading this way past these polite mountain bikers.

Saw these blooms hanging down from a bush in the tunnel between Russian Ridge and Skyline Ridge. No idea what they are, but they are pretty (Update: Jane at Bay Area Hiker says they are currants). I saw a hummingbird but it flitted off in a second, long before it occurred to me to try taking its picture.

So, those are the highlights. Extra thanks to Mike for guiding us to a deck on at the end of a spur trail near the far end of the Ridge Trail, where we broke for lunch (look for Mount Melville on the map if you go; it’s at the far northern edge of the park). Always nice to meet friends on the trail.

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Skyline Ridge links:

• My previous hikes.
• BAHiker.com
• Mid-Peninsula Open Space District

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Russian Ridge links:

• BAHiker
• Mid-Peninsula Open Space District

This one arrived in today’s e-mail at work in regards to my profile of Joseph D. Grant County Park:

Tom -

Just a quick note to say that you did a good job on the Grant Ranch piece — I have been out there several times and enjoyed it every time.

One note, however — I was out there as a Cal Fire volunteer a couple-three summers ago, and that means I was staying there for several days. Did they tell you about the feral pigs in the stream in front of the old ranch house? Two of us were walking from our comm unit at the park HQ over to the big parking lot where the mess tent was. First surprise was the pigs - they big guys! And ugly, too! And unfriendly, too, I am told.

We escaped from the pigs mostly by ignoring them, and continued on our way. We passed over the little bridge and started across the field. As we did, a bobcat wandered out of the area to our left and crossed our path, maybe ten feet away. He glanced at us, then went on his way.

The really interesting part of it was when he got past us. The CA Department of Corrections sends out inmate fire fighting crews, and they were settled just to our right in the field. The bobcat walked right past all the inmates, never looked at them, just walked on by. The inmates were so quiet, you could have heard the bobcat’s footsteps!

Anyway, it’s a great park, and you can have a picnic there and then go on up the hill to Lick Observatory as well. I am going to suggest to the lady in my life we go up there a couple of weeks from now, just to show it to her based on your write-up.

John Amos

Thanks John. Another feedback note: a 70-year-old guy wrote to tell me my idea of an “easy” hike at Grant — the loop out to Bass Lake — was anything but, at least in his case. The deal is, the “Loop Trail” coming from the Park HQ is a narrow single track that has a fair amount of climb, 500 to 700 feet in my correspondent’s estimation, and is easy to lose track of.

Goes to show one guy’s “easy” hike can be somebody else’s epic trek. The trails at Grant are almost all much more rigorous than the one at Bass Lake, which is why I rated it easy. The words I want to eat: calling it the “flattest” route at the park.