Irrelevance Glorified

Well, in the last post, I claimed that I was only like six months behind on pictures. Then I actually looked through all the pictures in my camera and realized that I was quite wrong. So, I’ll just see if I can’t play some catch up (seriously).

Most of the hikes I go on are in the Bay Area proper. I’ve joined a few Bay Area MeetUp groups, so the selection of hikes is usually some sort of compromise where each location is reasonable no matter where you live. This week was a bit different, in that the destination was quite a ways south, near Big Sur. If I lived up in San Francisco, this might be prohibitively far away, but it works out decent enough for those of us down at the South end of the bay.

This weekend’s selection was Andrew Molera State Park, which lies right along the ocean near Big Sur. The trail is mostly exposed, with all the vegetation being scrubby bushes, probably because of all the salt mist. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of wildflowers, though. We started out from the parking lot heading towards the beach, then hung a left and took the ridge trail up some steepish hills. The view would have been spectacular…if it hadn’t had been cloudy. The clouds in themselves weren’t so bad — mornings are often cloudy in California. The clouds/fog gradually retreats towards the coast as the sun rises, until only blue skies remain. However, since we were right on the coast, and not particularly lucky this day, the clouds lasted most of the hike. This was good news for those easily sunburned, but a bit disappointing to me. The ridge trail loops around to the Panorama and Bluff Trails, which skirt the coastline at a lower elevation than the ridge. From there, there are a few easy opportunities to head down to the beach, which we took advantage of before heading back to the trailhead. All in all, it was pretty enjoyable, and we went a little further south to grab an early dinner at a nice restaurant with a view.

I ended up taking some pictures of plants, but as usual, I didn’t know what they were. I figured that there had to be some wildflower identification sites out there, so I did some searching. The first resource I found was sponsored by the California Academy of Sciences, and was a database of flowers. This was exactly what I was looking for, in that it allowed me to search by color and and number of petals, which is about as much as a flower ignoramus such as me could handle. However, it wasn’t quite as comprehensive as I needed. That’s when I stumbled upon Calflora.org, which is a database of all sorts of California plants, both flowers and non-flowering plants. The awesome part of it was the What Grows Here? database, where you could put in a city or county or a state park and it would list all the species that they’ve found in that area. Pretty sweet. Due to that, I think I identified most of the flowers that I took pictures of.

Flickr Set Here.
Slideshow Below.
Pictures & Descriptions After the Jump

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This one has been sitting in my Flickr account for a while, and I’ve just been too lazy to put it out. But I have enough other stuff that I want to post up that it’s time to man up and start posting.

Back last May, I visited Mount Tamalpais State Park, great wilderness area just north of San Francisco in Marin County. I’ve hiked in MTSP three or four times total, and each time has been fantastic. There is a nice mix of landscapes and wildlife that I just find really pleasant and relaxing.

My itinerary for this day was the Matt Davis – Steep Ravine – Dipsea trail route, a highly recommended one from a number of hiking guides. The trail starts out high, descending through a beautiful ravine centered around a creek (still flowing pretty well, as it was still May). The trail crosses the water multiple times, so there were a number of bridges. The trail emerges from the trees into a great view of Stinson Beach and the Bolinas Lagoon. The trail descends to sea level, and passes through the downtown of Stinson Beach, before heading back into the hills. After completing this ~ 7.5 mile hike, I took some scenic pictures of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin County Side.

Picture set on Flickr, here
Slideshow below
Pictures & descriptions after the jump.

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I took two hikes at the beginning of May, and since I didn’t take a whole lot of pictures during the hikes, I’ll just combine them into one post.

On May 1st, I joined a group of people hiking Skyline Ridge, one of the state parks on top of the ridge of hills just south of Palo Alto and Los Altos. I had visited Russian Ridge previously, and Skyline Ridge is right next door. Skyline Ridge is much like Russian Ridge, except that the views of South Bay aren’t as nice, and the archeological artifacts are more prevalent. Overall, the trail was a C. Afterwards, we joined up with another group of hikers who were on Russian Ridge for a nice little picnic.

The week after, I joined in on an urban hike, a trail dubbed “Reverse Bay to Beakers”. Bay to Breakers is an annual 12k race in San Francisco that goes from downtown San Francisco to the Pacific Ocean, at the west edge of Golden Gate Park. We were taking a route that was more conducive to lunchtime eating, though, so we did it in reverse. There were a lot of people involved in this hike, which means that we had to go out in teams.

We were told to proceed to the destination, Gaylords at the Embarcadero Center, by whatever methods we saw fit. Once there, we would compare notes and relate any adventures we had. Previous incarnations of this hike had people participating in outdoor weddings and other amazing events. So, there was a bit of pressure to both get to the destination quickly and have adventures. In the end…we didn’t have any adventures. But I took some pictures anyway.

Flickr sets here and here.

Slideshows below
Pictures after the jump.

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I’ve been trying something new recently. Namely, I went to Meetup and started joining hiking groups. I figured there are a lot of people in the Bay Area who like to hike, and I could tap into their latent desire to organize things. For this particular weekend, the organized hike was up at the Morgan Territory Regional Preserve, an open space just north of Livermore, in the East Bay. Now is pretty much the best time to visit, because Winter is over and Summer has not really begun. In July, this hike would have been intolerable due to the heat, since East Bay gets really hot and this hike has very little shade. In Spring, however, the wildflowers are out, which is a nice treat.

For the first half of the hike, we just admired the wildflowers and the rolling hills. The views were not fantastic, although there was a pretty good view of the peaks of Mt. Diablo. The second half of the hike was more shaded, and passed through groves of trees and poison ivy (luckily, I didn’t run into any) while climbing rather steeply back towards the parking lot.

Overall, this hike wasn’t all that interesting. The wildflowers were nice, and the more challenging portions of this hike were interesting, but it was fairly short (~ 5 miles) and the views were not great (it was a little bit hazy). It was nice to visit an area that I hadn’t hiked at before, and we had a great lunch at Sai’s, a vietnamese restaurant in Livermore. I’ll give it a B-, but the whole experience an A-.

Flickr Set Here
Slideshow Below
Pictures & descriptions after the jump.

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Well, it’s been a long time in-between hikes. We can blame my laziness as well as the threat of rain, which combined with my laziness can make it hard to motivate myself out of the house. One of the last weekends of March proved to be quite beautiful, so I decided to try out Mission Peak, in East Bay. It has a reputation of being quite a steep hike, but it’s relatively short (~ 5.5. miles out and back) so I had always elected to try other hikes.

This hike is very accessible, which is both good and bad. Good because it’s only a 30 minute drive from my apartment, and there is no segment of the way that is composed of windy, narrow road. Bad because this means that everyone comes with their kids and their strollers and such. I got a somewhat late start, and arrived to find the parking lot full and the residential streets packed all around. I lucked out and found someone leaving, so my walk to the trailhead was only about 5 minutes.

This hike is not fooling anyone. You get to the trailhead, and you see the peak ahead of you, with the path snaking up to the crest. You know exactly what you’re getting into. The path up from the Stanford Avenue trailhead is wide and graveled. I’m not a huge fan of multi-use trails; I like to pretend that I’m trekking through the wilderness, and that illusion is disrupted if I have to watch out for mountain bikes and if I hear the sounds of babies in strollers.

I also was hoping that the view would be clearer, since it had rained a few days before. Alas, the haze returned sooner than I would have expected. Overall, though, it was a good way to break in my otherwise lethargic body (I was sore for a week) and to get myself prepared for the hiking season. While steep, the view was pretty rewarding. I give this hike a B+/A-.

Picture set on Flickr Here
Slideshow Below
Pictures & Descriptions after the jump.

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Merry Christmas everybody! I’m not Christian myself, but I do enjoy myself a day off. For all my loyal readers out there, I have a special treat for you, one that’s been on all your wishlists : a new post about a hiking trip I took in September! Yeah, towards the end of — wait, what? That wasn’t on your Christmas wishlist at all? Well, I don’t know, I have the whole list right here, and it clearly shows “A new hiking post from Ranjeet” for all of you. I don’t know what to say, take it up with Santa. At least it’s not a lump of coal.

Back towards the end of September, I visited The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park, a redwood-centric state park a little bit southeast of Santa Cruz. It’s pretty much the southest I’ve traveled for hiking, although the trip took less than an hour, thanks to its proximity to major highways. Although the area stopped being a logging camp in the 1920′s, it only became a state park in the 60′s. Compared to a lot of the other state parks, that’s pretty young. This park is close enough to “civilization” that many people eschew the Park’s parking lot. They park at businesses that exist right outside the park and then bike or run inside, thus avoiding the daily park fee. I kinda think this is a rude move, because they are using the park while not supporting it. It’s also a tiring move, because even if you park right outside the park, it’s a long, windy, uphill climb to the park interior. Basically, if you park outside, it’s a 5k just to get to anything worth seeing.

Nisene Parks State Park was sorta disappointing. Not too much signage, so I often didn’t know where I was. This is especially true near the park entrance, where the trails meander and I found myself back-tracking quite a bit. There are some very long hikes available here, but I found myself wanting to hit trails that were really far apart, so I ended up driving between trailheads. The first trails I hit included really old growth trees, including some real monsters, while the later trails were ridgeline trails through previously logged areas.

Alongside the issues with trail signs, there was a real dearth of historical information as well. The pictures I show pretty much detail the entirety of the documentation on site, which was disappointing, because I like to think that I’m learning while I’m hiking. Also, one of the main reasons I picked this park was that the epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake is actually close to one of the trails! There is even a sign! Imagine my horror when I got there to find out that the Aptos Creek trail was closed! A great disappointment. Whatever. Overall, I grade this place a C. Again, no one punched me in the face.

Anyways, enjoy the pictures, and Merry Christmas to everyone! I successfully ordered a Bag of Random Crap from Woot today!

Flickr Set Here.
Slideshow Below.
Pictures & Descriptions after the jump.

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It’s still been pretty hot out here, so I’ve been continuing my redwood forest tour along the Santa Cruz mountains. This week, I traveled to Huddart County Park, just west of Woodside. The one interesting thing about Huddart is that it is directly adjoining the Phleger Estate, a piece of donated land that is actually part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, although it’s quite a bit of distance from the Golden Gate bridge. Actually, the Phleger Estate is best accessed through Huddart County Park.

One nice thing about Huddart is that it’s easily accessed; I took I-280 to Woodside Road, and after a few minutes made a right on King’s Mountain Road to get to the park. In all, it only took 30 minutes, although I had to proceed carefully through the town of Woodside because it seemed like 50% of the population was out jogging or biking. The bad thing about the park, something I really only realized during the hike, is that it’s on the wrong side of the mountains. Since the park is on the east side of the mountain, it isn’t really sheltered from the heat of the valley, unlike the other forests I’ve been hiking through on the west side of the mountains. So, the only real respite I had from the heat was when my path took me close to Skyline Boulevard, and cool breezes sometimes wafted over the ridge.

This park was full of strange noises. It’s possible that I was being tracked by some terrifying predator, but in general, there were lots of rustles, pops, and creaks throughout the woods. I did see one deer, but nothing else substantial. Of course, I tramp through the woods trying to make a decent amount of noise, so as to not surprise any ornery creatures.

While a nice hike in general, this park isn’t “special” enough to make up for the fact that it doesn’t provide a break from the heat. I give it a straight B.

Flickr set here.
Slideshow below.
Pictures/Descriptions after the break.

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On August 15th, I took a trip to Butano State Park, again on the western slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains. This park is kinda tucked in behind Big Basin, and is much more annoying to get to. Much of the route is on winding country roads, so it took about 75-90 minutes to travel the 45 miles. The only other intrigue was the presence of a nearby wildfire, the so-called Lockheed fire. It was called the Lockheed fire because it was close to some Lockheed R & D facilities, which were in such “remote” locations so that if they exploded, they wouldn’t endanger a populated area. But that’s a different story. By my Google Maps estimates, that fire was over 10 miles and a few state parks away, so I figured I would be safe. However, the fire’s presence was definitely felt in the form of haze and the smell of smoke.

My hike was roughly 9 – 10 miles or so, and covered forests and canyons, flats and ridges. Bay Area Hiker doesn’t particularly like Butano, and I can’t disagree with her notion that Purisma Creek provides a better creekside hike. So I’ll give this hike a B+.

Flickr set here.
Slideshow below.
Pictures & descriptions after the jump.

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Even though I have been concentrating on parks in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I have nowhere near exhausted all my options. For the weekend of July 26th, I chose the Purisma Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve, a patch of protected redwood forest on the western slope of the Santa Cruz mountains, right near Half Moon Bay. In a theme that has been shared with a lot of places that I’ve visited, this preserve is centered around a creek (Purisma Creek) and the canyon that surrounds it.

One thing I liked about this park is that for me, it had a good balance of ease-of-access and getting-awayness. It was about 50 minutes to an hour away, taking I-280 North to Hwy 92 West to Half Moon Bay, then getting on Hwy 1 going south for only a mile or so before making a left onto Higgins Canyon road for the final 4 miles or so. In other words, I spent a minimum of time on narrow, unmarked roads. But I still felt fairly secluded, even though this trailhead was relatively popular.

I started out on Purisma Creek Trail, which climbs gradually as it follows the creek farther into the canyon. This multi-purpose trail meets up with the Soda Gulch Trail at about the 2.3 mile mark. This trail is refreshingly hiker-only, and it weaves through the forest and into hillside quasi-meadows for another 2.5 miles before hitting the Harkins Ridge Trail. The suggested trail plan calls for heading back to the trailhead to complete the loop at this point, but I decided to extend the hike and headed uphill, to the northeast. I had to watch for a bunch of mountain bikers on this trail, but I found myself up by Skyline Blvd before heading back down to the trailhead on Whittemore Gulch Trail. Overall, I estimate my hike to be between 9.5 and 10 miles.

This hike was suggested to me by Jane Hubers “60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of San Francisco”, who preferred this place to most other redwood parks. And for the most part, I would have to agree with her. I really enjoyed this hike, for reasons not quite definable. It did not have fantastic vistas, and indeed few places where I could see much beyond trees. But I seem to value varied landscapes, a nice mix of steep climb and gradual grades, and nice trees, and this trail delivered. I just remember getting back to my car and thinking “Gee, that was an enjoyable hike”. I give it an A.

Not much pictures of this hike. Well, I took a number of pictures, but a greater than average number of them turned out to be not worth posting (and as you have seen, I have pretty low standards for what I end up posting) due to redundancy or horrible composition. I did come across a family of quail bustling across the trail. They were actually really funny, because they seemed to be panicking due to my sudden arrival. Since quail don’t really fly, though, they didn’t burst up into the air, but mainly tried to scatter into the brush. But some of the baby quail couldn’t really decide which side of the trail they wanted to be at, so they zig-zagged back and forth like a trailside version of pinball, until they sorted themselves out. Unfortunately, by the time I had the presence of mind to turn my camera to video mode, they had scattered, so no proof. Sorry.

Flick set here.
Slideshow below.
Pictures and descriptions after the jump.

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After my debacle at Diablo, I resolved to better consider the heat as I continued my summer hikes. For the most part, that means East Bay is off limits until Fall arrives. South Bay isn’t all that much better. North Bay is far away and almost certainly requires paying a bridge toll somewhere. So the Peninsula it is! Once you cross over the Santa Cruz mountains, summer temperatures are much milder, and the clouds often don’t retreat until noon approaches. There are quite a few state parks that straddle the crest of the Santa Cruz mountains or lay on it’s western slopes, so I figured now’s a good time to try them. For the weekend of July 18th, I chose Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, near the town of Felton and about 10 miles north of Santa Cruz. There are actually two large separate sections of the park. The southern part is more heavily used by campers, and as such, has parking fees and the like. The northern portion was donated to the California State Park system at a later time, and just has trails and stuff — and parking is free! This portion, the “Fall Creek Unit” used to be a big source of lime; the stuff was mined and calcined in limekilns before being shipped off in redwood barrels. Some of the relics of this legacy is still there in the park.

I started off this hike on the Fall Creek trail, which begins at the entrance and follows the canyon created by Fall Creek. After passing by some barrel-making equipment, I made a right onto Big Ben Trail, which proved to be a decently steep climb up to Truck Trail, an old logging road (now a fire road). This hooked up with the Ridge Trail, which took me back to my starting point, forming a 7 mile clockwise loop trail.

The redwoods are nice, although not old growth by any means. The rangers here seem to want to give this park a bit of an “untamed” feeling, as there are a lot of fallen logs that you have to pick your way around. So, while this hike wasn’t spectacular or anything, the rusticness and the little pieces of history bump this hike up to a B+

Flick set here
Slideshow below.
Pictures after the jump.

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