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…
Yearly Archives: 2008
Wanted: Local hiker lore
by tom • May 7, 2008 • 2 Comments
Hiker lore: stories that practically beg to be shared. What are yours? One from my mental archives: I hiked to the top of Monument Peak at Ed Levin County Park one time with a Persian pharmacist who had lived in…
Dreaming up a business card
by tom • May 7, 2008 • 11 Comments
I’ve been meaning to do this for ages and finally got around to it: a business card I can hand out to unsuspecting hikers on the trail. The tagline at the bottom says “news, links and lore for hikers in…
Interesting camper concept
by tom • May 5, 2008 • 5 Comments
Yeah, I should’ve been out hiking yesterday but instead I spent the afternoon gawking at the clever creations at Make Faire, where wacky do-it-yourselfers get their ya-yas out every year at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds. While there’s a smattering…
The path to a hiker’s heart…
by tom • May 5, 2008 • 2 Comments
… runs through his feet. Another way to say it: all gifts of high-quality hiking socks are gratefully accepted. A few weeks back, Wade at Outdoorzy.com sent me an e-mail saying he had something he’d like to mail to me.…
A day in court for South Bay open space
by tom • May 5, 2008 • 2 Comments
The Santa Clara County Open Space Authority is sitting on $56 million, paralyzed since 2001 by a lawsuit that prevents the authority from spending it on trails and other stuff we like. Tomorrow, the state Supreme Court will begin hearing…
Which South Bay neighborhoods are closest to trails?
by tom • May 3, 2008 • 5 Comments
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…
Essential site: Weekly Walker
by tom • May 2, 2008 • 0 Comments
Get this: Yet another local hiker named Tom who has a hiking site. Weekly Walker is old-school, without many of the doo-dads some of us are prone to play with, but it has in-depth descriptions of hikes across the Bay…
Experiencing technical difficulties
by tom • May 2, 2008 • 2 Comments
Update: oddly enough the upgrade seems to have succeeded. I’m sure new “features” (previously known as “bugs”) will emerge.