Here comes the annual spate of trips to Point Reyes and elsewhere along the coast, following the plan of finding good hikes that are don’t leave me dripping with sweat. I’ll be back in my usual haunts and the challenging peaks of Mount Diablo and Calistoga in the winter, but now it’s time to transition to cooler spots. I was with a relative hiking newcomer this weekend who hadn’t experienced much of Point Reyes. Where to start? The most popular… Read More »
After approximately 200 hikes in the past four years, I get very excited at the prospect of a new one, especially one right here in Sonoma County. Sometimes a new hike can be a combination of some well-known hikes stitched together a different way, or can include a new segment tacked on to an existing one. My setting last weekend was a point-to-point hike taking me from Willow Creek, located at Duncans Mills, all the way to the Pacific Ocean,… Read More »
Did you know that one of the top 10 botanical gardens in the world for magnolias and maple trees is in Glen Ellen? Or that it is in the worldwide Rose Hall of Fame for its collection of Asian roses? Just celebrating its 25th birthday last year, Quarryhill Botanical Gardens is a nice spot for an easy hike and/or picnic if you’re traveling between Santa Rosa and Sonoma, which is a frequent occurrence for me these days. I stopped there… Read More »
Visitors to Mendocino know that it’s more than just a quaint town. It also is right in the middle of excellent hiking opportunities. For the most part, the nearby parks (over a dozen in Mendocino County alone) aren’t overly strenuous workouts, but they are scenic, largely coastal and diverse enough to provide plenty for all types of trailheaders. On a recent visit to the area, among the parks I checked out was Mendocino Headlands State Park, which is the collection… Read More »
After Mount Tam, it’s one of the tallests peak in Marin County, but that doesn’t mean you’ve heard of Mount Burdell. I certainly hadn’t until a couple of years ago when I hiked Olompali State Park. If you’ve never heard of that one too, that’s just as understandable. Both are in northern Marin outside Novato and both are entirely overshadowed by their more prominent and popular larger neighbor to the south. Anyway, the Olompali trail was a five-mile-long zig-zag path… Read More »
It took a Tasmanian watercolorist to adequately describe it, but I think he did a nice job. “The greatest meeting of land and water in the world,” is how Francis McComas saw Point Lobos, the 1,200 acres of land and water that jut off the Pacific Coast just south of Monterey. It is now a state nature reserve, both the 554 acres of land and the 775 underwater acres too, and it is quite a sight. It gets overshadowed at… Read More »
Continuing my recent blog posts on short-ish dayhikes around the North Bay, I had a chance to hit a couple more interesting spots in recent days. You too? Uh, why not? Healdsburg Ridge – I went here soon after it first became more publicly accessible a few years ago, and that was on a fairly hot spring day but right after a rainfall so I do remember the extreme muddy conditions. That wasn’t the case at all on a recent… Read More »
Monday’s snow aside (yes, Virginia, it did snow in Sonoma County – see photos here), the hiking trails around the North Bay are getting crowded these days. No surprise, given the early mustard blooms and other things starting to come to life. In contrast from some of my mega-hikes of recent years, I’m doing quite a bit of smaller hikes, giving me a chance to explore some city and county parks around the region and often combine two or three… Read More »
The snake-like (more for shape, not habitat, although….) 22-mile water channel running in a vertical strip along the western flank of Santa Rosa is now seeing a lot of visitors. To be more precise, the wetlands surrounding the Laguna de Santa Rosa are the attraction. After two years in the making, a very accessible new trail by a section of the the Laguna de Santa Rosa recently opened to the public. It allows for a pleasant series of small walks… Read More »
It’s probably the first thought that comes to mind when hiking on the Half-A-Canoe Loop at Lake Sonoma. More on that in a bit. With its dozen of miles of trails surrounding a pristine lake, and free hiking access, it’s a wonder Lake Sonoma isn’t more crowded in the winter. I was there on a recent weekend that might have been rainy and cold, but ended up being sunny and mild. The lake was created 30 years ago when the… Read More »
Despite some earlier predictions of wintry-like weather around here this past weekend, it turned out to be a perfect weekend for hiking. Clear sky, a sun warming things up from the early-morning frost levels, and not many people out on the trails. At Shiloh Ranch Regional Park, the trails are extremely muddy right about now, thanks to the recent rains. The result is that the Canyon and Creekside trails are open only to pedestrians right now, and the footing is… Read More »
News of the collapse of the scenic rock arch on Tennessee Beach in Marin County reminded me of the hikes I took there in recent years. As is often the case at the Marin Headlands, it is generally windy – and gorgeous. I wish I could have stayed on one of those hikes long enough to catch the fading sunlight pass through the opening. It’s always worth working with the tides to get down to the coves and beaches… Read More »
