Tom Stienstra of that other newspaper says that a section of Henry Coe State Park called the Orestimba Wilderness will soon be accessible to mere mortals. For decades, getting to the wilderness required hiking, biking horesback-riding at least 20 miles over Coe’s famously grueling hills, a prospect that kept almost everybody away. Coe would open a few gravel roads to the wilderness once a year for a backcountry weekend open to a lucky few chosen by lottery.

Since the park opened in 1959, at 87,000 acres, the largest state park in Northern California, it’s been the Bay Area’s backyard wilderness — but it took a 56-mile round trip with about a 15,000-foot aggregate vertical climb to reach Jackrabbit Lake and the best public pond-style bass fishing in California. The trip easily hit 75 to 90 miles to also visit the Rooster Comb and the best small lakes for fishing, Jackrabbit Lake, Mustang Pond, Kingbird Pond, and several others — the matrixes of valleys, creeks and foothill grasslands for wildflowers and wildlife. It was so grueling that almost nobody even tried it.

All that will change on May 19. A new park entrance at the new Dowdy Ranch Visitors Center, located near Bell Station on Highway 156, will provide landmark access to the previous near impossible-to-reach sectors of the wilderness park. It will be only 2 miles to a fantastic swimming hole on Pacheco Creek, 8 miles to Kingbird Pond, 11 miles to Mustang Pond, 14 miles to Jackrabbit Lake, and a round trip of about 28 miles to all of these spots, including hitting Rooster Comb. Add in a Saturday-night campout and this could be the perfect weekend mountain biking trip, maybe the best combination adventure in California with biking, camping, fishing, swimming, wildflowers and wildlife. For hikers, it will be all backpack-style in the oak woodlands landscape. You can camp pretty much anywhere you choose, wilderness-style.

This is big news for Bay Area backpackers, who had basically two choices for seeing the Orestimba: set aside five days or go along on one of Steve Sergeant’s Fast and Light outings.

While it’s true that the new terrain will bear an uncanny resemblance to the rest of the park, it’ll still be fun to go there. I think I know where I’ll be on the 19th of May.