Two-Heel Drive

The ocean side of Wilder Ranch State Park gets all the tourists, picnickers and naked sunbathers. Hardly anybody goes to the backcountry on the north side of Highway 1, and almost none of them travel on foot. Hikers probably read “popular with equestrians and mountain bikers” in the guidebooks and start turning the pages. Their loss.

Mainly, they’re missing the meadows. The Wilder Ranch backcountry is pretty much all meadow, which forces the perceptive hiker (and even people like yours truly) to ponder the concept of meadow hiking.

I never imagined there was any such thing till I wandered through Wilder Ranch’s backcountry over the course of two weekends. We don’t give much thought to any meadow not named Tuolumne, and even that Yosemite showplace doesn’t compare all that well to, say, Half Dome or El Capitan. You walk through a meadow on your way to a sexier attraction and forget about it. Usually.

Since I’d already invested one Sunday at Wilder Ranch, I figured a second trip would give me an excuse to write about it in my Mercury News column. I’d already done the coast trails, with a few miles on the north side of Highway 1 just to get a taste of the place.

On paper (or pixels), there’s not all that much to recommend the backcountry side — it’s mostly open country that skirts a few patches of forest. It does attract riders on wheel and hoof, and it doesn’t have many single-track trails.

What it does have is all these meadows. At risk of venturing into hype territory, I’ve gotta say they are marvelous meadows. Tall, green grass dotted with dandelions and baby blue-eyes. Forests of Douglas-fir at the fringes, even a few groves of young redwoods.

I ended up doing a 14-mile grand loop that started at the backcountry entrance, took the Engelsmans Loop trail to the Long Meadow Trail to the northern end of the park, then turned back south on the Chinquapin Trail to the Eucalyptus Loop Trail, then headed west on to the far edge of the park on the Enchanted Loop Trail, which I followed all the way to Highway 1, which I crossed under and headed to the beach for lunch, then took the Ohlone Bluff and Old Cove Landing trails back to the Cultural Preserve at the park HQ. (VirtualParks has a free map).

So let’s look at some pictures (double my usual complement because I saw lots of cool blooms).

One of the meadows on the Long Meadow Trail. These old roads up the hillside are not especially steep — the grade is downright gentle most of the way, which makes the meadow musing that much better.

Sometimes I just like to take a picture of pine cones.

First test question of the day: Identify these light-purple, fluted flowers. They grow on a bush up to about seven feet tall.

Second test question: identify these bluish blooms, which grow in tall grasses. I think they may be a kind of baby blue-eye.

Hey, it was Mother’s Day after all.

Test question three: identify this ground-hugging purple bloom.

An interesting sentiment to find carved into a crossbeam on a picnic table.

Still lots of miniature lupines along the trail.

The Enchanted Loop Trail has one of the rare wooded sections of trail, where I saw this iris.

Enchanted Loop also strays very close to this sheer drop-off. There’s a warning sign down the trail a ways.

Required bent-tree pic.

Test question 4: Why does this bush have this foam on it?

My favorite shot of the day: sun illuminating a poppy.

OK, on to the mighty Pacific:

Passable spot for a lunch break, I’d say. The wind was blowing a gale, which made me grateful to be walking with it behind me rather than pounding me in the face.

Test question 5: Identify these blooms seen at the edge of the beach.

A lizard pauses for his close-up.

The false lupines are out in force this year out here.

I love it when animals just seem to be soaking up the view.

Finally, a few shots from the Cultural Preserve:

Pretty old Victorian. Tours are available on the weekends, I believe.

Coastal dwellers have always had a weakness for convertibles.

Who knew a blacksmith needed so many hammers?

My granddad on my mom’s side had an old John Deere just like this one.

Rooster in repose.

So those are the highlights. The Enchanted Loop was my favorite trail (just don’t fall off the cliff).

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.

View Larger Map

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.

View Larger Map

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.