I’m normally used to solitude when I go on my hiking trips, but for the early part of this hike, I was surrounded by the sound of noisy mobs. Apparently, a number of groups were out at Portola Redwoods this weekend, and were enjoying themselves loudly. Interestingly, most of the voices I heard were foreign; the groups appeared to be south asian, and large packs of teenagers were scrambling over rocks and falling into the creeks. While somewhat distracting, these sounds faded away as I ranged away from the heart of the park. I imagine that the long weekend played a role in all this activity.

This hike started out on the Nature Trail just outside of the very informative ranger station. From there, I took a short hike to Tiptoe Falls (fairly unimpressive at this time of year) before doubling back and taking the Iverson Trail to the Pomponio Trail. This trail crossed me over to Pescadero Creek County Park, where I continued on to the Bridge Trail and then Old Haul Rd., a fire road that was once used to haul lumber out of the area. Eventually, this fire road took me back to Portola Redwoods, where I took the Summit Trail up a decent hill before following the Slate Creek Trail back down to the parking lot. Before ending, I took a little trip to see “Old Tree”, apparently the largest tree in the park. According to my guidebook, this was about 7.5 miles.

Overall, I give this hike a B. No vistas, but a nice hike through coastal redwoods, and decent variety.

Flickr set here.
Slideshow below.
Pictures After the Jump.

One of the cool things about living here (well, it hasn’t gotten old yet, at least) is seeing the fog roll in and out. On my way to Portola Redwoods, my drive passed through a number of valleys, and in many I could see that fog line pulsing.

There were a number of small bridges set up like this. At the time, it hardly seems worth the effort to build a bridge. Being the dry season, this little stream was barely more than a trickle. Still, I appreciated the effort.

This monumental cascade was definitely worth the detour that my trail guide had me do. At times like this, I wish I had some tilt-shift equipment to make this look epic.

Well, I was anxious to try out my Gorillapod, so I propped it up on this fallen tree and took a picture near its base. I have a 10 second timer on the camera, so it’s kind of a rush to get into place once I’ve set it up. It really limits how far away I can go or what position I can get into. Running along a wide, flat trunk, however, is certainly doable.

I think this tree trunk slid down this hill relatively recently, and was stopped when it plowed into the ground. Maybe in a few hundred years, there will be a gorge here or something. I’m pretty sure how that’s how it works.

One thing I kinda like about all these parks up on the crest of the Santa Cruz mountains is that many of them are somewhat connected. For instance, on this hike, I’m crossing over into Pescadero Creek County Park. There must be some sort of spring around here, because it was quite muddy, even though the rest of the park was quite dry.

You’d think that they would be better able to withstand the winds and such if they just had deeper root systems, but for whatever reason, many of the Douglas Firs and Redwoods feel content to go shallow and wide.

So, I think this is my very first encounter with a banana slug. This dude was just creeping along the trail when I came across him. He probably thought I was making fun of him, when I took the time to drop a quarter down to give a sense of scale. No offense intended, banana slug, I just wanted the folks at home to get a feeling for how large you were.

Considering this is a banana slug, I probably didn’t need to take a video to capture all the action. I could have just put together a bunch of stills and gotten the picture. I couldn’t resist, however.

It’s not clear to me why this picture was taken. Normally, this means I just delete it off Flickr, but for whatever reason, I’m letting this one pass. This Fire Road took me from Pescadero Creek back towards Portola Redwoods. I’m sure I’ll look back on this picture someday and suddenly see an alien hiding in the bushes or something.

Look at how coy I am! I do love redwood groves such as these.

I can never get over how awesomely tall and straight these redwoods are, so I will continue to take pictures of them as I see fit.

I’m not really sure what’s going on here. A wasp attached to a dragonfly? A transdimensional beast? Whatever it was, I took a picture and got the heck out of there.

Towards this end of this hike, I divert from the loop to take a little out-and-back on Old Tree Trail. What’s at the end of Old Tree Trail? Well, Old Tree, obviously. As you can, as I wide as I am, I am nothing compared to Old Tree.

So, as I’ve intimated before, the traffic here really annoys and frustrates me. I can think of few things that are as soul-draining as sitting in my car, waiting at a red light. Nothing good comes of it. So I’ve started biking in (so now I am sitting on my bicycle, waiting at red lights). I’ve even worked out a route that’s moderately safe, with a bike lane and everything. However, there’s one development which has me quite embarrassed – I am really slow. Like, slow enough that I wonder if something is wrong with the bike. Slow enough that ten-year olds are passing me on their way to school. The way I see it, I can blame it on the double-edged sword of being out of shape and fat. I mean, since I’m out of shape, I just can’t pedal very fast for very long. And because I’m fat, it just means I’ve got more mass to move. It’s really a lose-lose. But, thanks to lots of hippies and recreationists around, there’s quite a lot of bike paths around. In fact, there’s an initiative to create new paths and connect up exiting ones so that there is a continuous path around the entire bay.

Pretty cool. Anyway, the Steven’s Creek Trail runs right by my apartment, so I thought I’d try and get on it and take it to the bay, which is quite close, even though it doesn’t really feel like it. The bay north of Mountain View isn’t really anything to shake a stick at – it’s mostly wild marsh, dirty water, and salt ponds. But, it’s good enough to bike through, I guess. The bike paths/trails wander through a lot of rather unpicturesque areas. In fact, some of the trails east of Mountain View along the Bay are little more than access roads to the salt pond areas. But west of Mountain View, as the trail gets into Palo Alto, it becomes…slightly better. It goes north of some country club, nice area, but then gets right back into stinky marsh.
The strangest thing is that there were a lot of couples there, walking around, holding hands. I can just imagine the conversation earlier in the day:

Woman : Honey, I think I’m in the mood tonight.
Man : Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
Together : Let’s sit by a pool of decaying vegetation!

I really hope everyone I saw there had really exhausted all other options.

I knew that I could keep going for a while, so I just decided I would stop at a bench, consume some fluids, and head back the way I came. But where to stop?

Hmm…

A rat head? That’s a good start.

A ridiculous inscription on a bench? [Name redacted], I applaud your strangely sentimental friends for that inscription. I don’t mean to crap on your tribute, but for your sake, I really really hope you loved pelicans. Anyways, the combination of rathead and dedication made this a solid place to stop.

I felt this was a good start. I could see the Dumbarton bridge in the distance. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to ride out to the bridge and cross it….but I’ll leave that to a time in the future.

So, at this point, you may ask, did Ranjeet just make this post so as to show his picture of a giant rat head? Yes, reader, I did. In retrospect, I probably should have taken more pictures. There’s always next time!