Two-Heel Drive is a blog for hikers, campers, backpackers and nature cravers in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. Need someplace to go? I've hiked all the best Bay Area trails: check out my favorite hikes or read the park profiles I wrote for the San Jose Mercury News.
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.
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.
Skyline Ridge links:
Russian Ridge links:
So I told the gray-bearded mountain biker dude with the bike that probably cost more than my car, “I’d probably be a mountain biker but I have a this strange fear of flat tires.”
“Well if that’s the only thing standing between you and a mountain bike,” he assured me, “you should get one.” Tube and tire technology have rendered such worries obsolete, you see.
So, as inevitable as the return of spring wildflowers, about three hours later I came across another mountain biker fixing a flat. He told me another biker just gave him an extra inner tube so he wouldn’t have to drag his bike all the way back to the car. No questions asked.
Major karma points there.
You can’t talk about Santa Teresa County Park without mentioning the mountain bikers — I saw two people on wheels for every one on foot. Maybe they aren’t all as groovy as the guy who gave away the spare inner tube, but they were polite, smiling, etc. Their favorite trails are steep and rock-strewn, which enforces a rough discipline missing in a lot of local parks. It’s hard to work up enough speed to do anything dangerous without rattling a few rear molars loose.
If you can’t bear to share with bicycle types, Santa Teresa might not be your patch of trail. It’s not the sexiest park in the South Bay, but it is putting on a decent wildflower show as spring unfolds. Taking pictures and chatting with mountain bikers kept my brain occupied for several hours on Sunday, so I’m not complaining.
Speaking of pictures, let’s look at some (double my usual quota this week!):
I started out at the Stile Ranch trail head, which isn’t actually in the park, but comes highly recommended from people who know things about wildflowers. Right now there are many, many poppies — whole bushes of them, in fact. The trail zigzags up a hillside and is very rough and rocky, which attracts bikers like bugs to an open flame. Upside: going fast here is borderline suicidal.
Many of the poppies hadn’t opened to the sun when I arrived.
Good ol’ bluedicks, got a bunch of pictures of them.
The ever trustworthy oak and sky pic.
This picture sums up Santa Teresa: Open, unshaded, hilly. Trails are in pretty good shape, and the signage is pretty good.
There’s a bump on the trail here where downhill bikers can get a little air if they work up enough speed. A group of four came through, and the second got enough air to make me think I’d get a cool action shot of the guys coming after him. Alas, this guy, the third one through, was in full politeness mode and slammed on the brakes when he saw me standing there. So, no action shots. Where are the reckless speed demons when you need them?
Didn’t even notice the bug on this one till I got the picture uploaded at home.
Saw only a few lupines here.
Big batch of tidy tips along the Rocky Ridge Trail, which is where all the bikers want to be. Also had the most flowers, of all the trails I walked on.
Not sure but I think this might be a globe gilia.
Not all poppy blooms form into those perfect cups.
Coyote Peak in the distance.
The view of the rest of the park from Coyote Peak.
Flowers and rusty barbed wire — how’s that for visual contrast?
Pretty sure this is a checkerbloom.
This is Santa Teresa’s Ohlone Trail. Some is shady, some goes next to the golf course, where you can exult in the knowledge that you’re not ruining a perfectly good walk in the sunshine by trying to smack and absurdly small ball across the landscape with an absurdly shaped mallet.
Another look at the park from the opposite end — Coyote Peak is the high point in the distance.
A wild turkey.
More oak and sky.
These look kinda sorta like redmaids.
A poppy in full bloom in the early afternoon.
Almost back where I started, five hours later.
All done. Here’s a map of the park:
My route: Stile Ranch Trail (lower left) to Mine Trail to Rocky Ridge Trail (bottom center) to Coyote Peak. From there, down the Boundary Trail (way steep) to Coyote Peak to Ohlone Trail, across Bernal Road, picked up Mine Trail again, to Bernal Trail (saw turkeys there) to the Vista Loop (top left), then returned to Mine Trail, crossed Bernal Road again, took Mine Trail back to Stile Ranch Trail and retraced my steps there. Park district PDF of the park here.
See my previous Santa Teresa post for many more park-related links.
I didn’t quite get in all the park’s trails… I may do a few more miles there this afternoon.
Sunset magazine’s Fresh Dirt blog has a bunch of pretty pictures and tips for finding flowery goodness.
The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District holds multiple guided walks each weekend at their dozens of protected swaths of open space on the Peninsula and in the South Bay. (Click here for a schedule.) I particularly like the 12 miles of trails at Windy Hill Open Space Preserve, where you can spot both woodland flowers like this hound’s tongue (above) and giant trillium (below) and grassland flowers like Clarkia blooming in the open trails along Skyline Road. Of course, for dramatic fields of flowers, it’s hard to compete with Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve; its relatively high altitude means that wildflower season stretches into May there most years.
Long as we’re on the subject, Rebecca at Calipidder.com saw a bunch of pretty ones near Point Reyes last weekend.
A few more links:
bayareawildflowers.com — has PDFs of multiple wildflower varieties (big files, around 9 mb), sorted by flower color, plant family and scientific name.
Bay Nature has another very informative page, with this nugget for South Bay folks:
Santa Clara: Stile Ranch Trail, Santa Teresa County Park
This hillside has been called a “wildflower-covered rock garden” and also boasts great views of the valleys below. A short, zigzagging, uphill trail winds through diverse wildflowers that thrive in serpentine soil, including pink shooting stars, jewelflowers, and spring beauties; yellow sanicles and goldfields; red columbines; blue gilias; and orange poppies.
To get there: Almaden Expwy south to the end, turn right on Harry Rd, left on McKean Rd, and left on Fortini Rd. Park just beyond the intersection of Fortini and San Vicente.
I’ve been meaning to check out Santa Teresa.
And finally: all posts here containing the word “wildflowers”
I’m seeing hints of wildflower season — lots o’ poppies on steep, sunny hillsides, mainly — but I can’t be everywhere so I figured I may as well ask what the rest of you are seeing out there.
So, let’s have it. How many? Where? How do they compare with previous years? What are your favorites? To get you in the mood, here’s an iris I saw last year at Sanborn Skyline County Park:
More wildflower links:
I saw a couple little yellow blooms the last time out, the first hints of the blast of color coming up this spring. So far the weather seems to be pretty good: ample rain but not overdoing it, time between storms for the landscape to recover.
Mariposa lily, Henry Coe State Park, May 2007).Last year we had too little rain; the year before that, too much — two years in a row of rather puny wildflower seasons tells me we’re long overdue for a really good one. Among the places I’ll be looking for them:
Henry W. Coe State Park. This is the only place where I regularly see those gorgeous paint-brushed Mariposa lilies like the one at left. I know they must grow in other places, I just don’t see them.
Point Reyes National Seashore. Last time I was up there I kept seeing these amazing purple irises — they grow in grassy areas and are very difficult to photograph, but are most impressive.
Joseph D. Grant County Park. Perhaps the most diverse assortment of blooms appears here very spring. I’m told that on a really good year, the hillsides look like something from an Impressionist painting.
California poppies high on a ridge in the backcountry section of Calero County Park, April 2007. Calero County Park. Like Grant, Calero has a lot of open, sunny hillsides that bloom up nice. You have to get up in the hills away from the equestrian areas to see the best parts.
Pinnacles National Monument. The rocks get all the attention, but the blooms here are varied and vibrant.
Sunol Regional Wilderness. Spring is a bit muddy in Sunol, but the colors more than compensate. Sunol is about as nice as it gets during wildflower season.
So, I think these hit the high spots … please weigh in with more suggestions.
Calflora.org appears to have documented everything green (and any other hue) from Oregon to Mexico, Sierra to Pacific. The highlight is the Map Viewer, which shows where certain species have been seen in specific locations. The search engine is a bit complicated, but nothing brilliant educated hikers such as ourselves cannot figure out (clue: it helps to know full scientific names. Here are all the California poppy — Eschscholzia californica — sightings).
(Hat tip: Floralore.com, a fun site for would-be botanists)