Two-Heel Drive is a blog for hikers, campers, backpackers and nature cravers in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. Need someplace to go? I've hiked all the best Bay Area trails: check out my favorite hikes or read the park profiles I wrote for the San Jose Mercury News.
Ever so often I get around to updating my list of “A-List Hiking Bloggers” over there on the right-hand side. I’ve added a bunch in the past few days — if yours isn’t there or you know of another hiker’s blog that belongs on the list, leave a note in the comments.
Rebecca Bond is a graphic artist with a get-out-under-the-trees bent. Just last Friday she was haunting Redwood Regional Park, one of the few big Bay Area parks I have yet to check out.
Starting out on a ridge at the Skyline Gate staging area, across the street from multi-million dollar bay-view homes, you wouldn’t quite understand why this park is called Redwood Regional as you mostly see pine and eucalyptus trees ahead of you. And continuing down West Ridge Trail, you enter oak woodland filled with lots of California hazelnut, bay laurel trees, madrone trees, oak trees, huckleberry bushes, pine (not sure if they are Monterey or knobcone, but definitely pine) and many others. But descend farther, and the oak and madrone trees become older, the underbrush sparser, and the sunlight dimmer. As you get closer to the bottom of the ridge it gets much darker, and suddenly, you are amongst those giant conifer trees—Sequoia sempervirens a.k.a Coast Redwood, hundreds of feet tall, blocking out the majority of light. It feels as if you’ve entered a fairy-tale forest—moist, dark and cool.
Redwood’s higher on my list now, for sure. Rebecca also stopped in on Tomales Point to check out the elk awhile back. Looks like I’m about the only hiker in the region remaining who hasn’t been to Tomales Point this year.
You’ve no doubt heard of the pastime of orienteering, in which you dress up in your finest hiking regalia, navigate miles of hairpin-turn mountain roads to an appointed trailhead, hit the trail with maps designed to get you lost, and dash through the bush to get it over with ASAP.
This is the Bearded Spock Parallel Universe of Hiking, where up is down, left is right, and “Do Not Enter” signs mean “it’s fine to head this way to Checkpoint 3, and besides, what kind of moron doesn’t know the sign is for cars, not orienteers?”
Not that I’m complaining. If my wrong turn hadn’t taken me half way to Albuquerque, I’d have been sitting there on the picnic table at Joseph D. Grant County Park with nothing to do after about 57 minutes, violating my “hike must last longer than drive to get there” rule.
My only gripe is that to my mind, the next best thing to the towering exultation of victory is the perverse pleasure of coming in dead last (to my enduring chagrin, my hometown always came in 297th in those “top 300 places to live in the United States”; I always wanted to be from the worst town in America). Bad as I was, somebody robbed me of the honor of being worst. Alas.
So this is what happened: Sunday capped the Bay Area Orienteering Club’s three-day O in the Oaks competition, which pitted some of the best orienteers in the West against the relentless hillsides of Grant Ranch. All rookie whining aside, finishing an orienteering competition courses is a major achievement — the organizers give you a map with contour lines and a few landmarks, and you have to head out into those hills with a full head of steam and hope to finish without inducing a myocardial infarction. The top competitors are runners, not hikers, with a superior knack for scanning maps, reading terrain and avoiding wrong turns.
BAOC is friendly, helpful outfit that also offers “recreational” orienteering courses better suited to people who have come to rely on these things called trails to keep them from perishing in the wilderness. Steve Sergeant of Wildebeat fame invited me to come along this weekend’s outing … I thought about inviting some Two-Heel Drive regulars along, but I wanted to see what it was like first — and figured it’d be better for my credibility if my most avid readers didn’t have to organize the search-and-rescue operation to get me back to civilization.
So this is what it’s like: busloads of guys and gals with 3 percent body fat are ferried up the road to the overland equivalent of a double-black-diamond moguls route (some require a mile of hiking just to get started), while beginners and Boy Scouts take the bunny-slope versions near the event HQ. Advance registration is mandatory for the hard-core routes, but mere mortals (and the directionally challenged) can show up on the day of the event and sign up for a recreational course. Sunday’s outing cost $6 to enter and $3 to rent an electronic memory-chip doodad that records the route.
Beginners can take a quick how-to course and choose from the easiest course — which is all on trails — and the next-easiest, which requires a bit of bushwhacking. First timers who’ve done lots of hiking should do fine on the next-easiest.
Let’s do the pictures:
BAOC leads events all over the region. Here’s a sampling of event maps.
Competitors’ times are listed on these printouts.
Here’s the starting point.
The sign-up sheet.
After you register, you head over here to get your name and entry number into the computer system.
Here’s my map. A compass is not mandatory, and going without one can get you on your way to that coveted last-place finish. This route is less than two miles, so the checkpoints are actually much closer together than you might imagine if you used the maps provided by the parks department. Most of my stops were no more than five minutes apart — but my wrong turn was like 50 minutes between stops. Object lesson: if you see no checkpoints within about 10 minutes, you’re almost certainly going the wrong way. I followed my usual bull-headed determination to get to a point where I knew exactly where I was and got back on course from there. Slow, but not slow enough. I’ll know better next time.
A sample checkpoint. You stick your memory-chip doo-dad into this thing; it beeps and records your time and location. You must do all the checkpoints in order to avoid disqualification. The rookie-orientation course will fill you in on how it all works. If this were on a college campus there’d be a requirement to toss back a shot of tequila at each stop, and the most ardent collegiate orienteers would play to lose (not that I’m recommending this, mind you).
I suspect these guys were from a Boy Scout troop — trotting to juice their finish times.
Here’s the finish line. They were about two minutes from sending out a search party for me.
Steve and Jean, the WildeBeat team.
A time-honored autumn tradition: kids leaping into piles of fallen leaves.
Competitors check their scores.
Hardy orienteers return from one of the “orange” competition courses to record their times. The guy in the blue jacket was walking with a cane. People of all ages ran the courses.
Giving our scores one last check. Steve was in ninth place at this point. Jean came in just ahead of me — she had a much better excuse for her time: a bobcat sighting that required a 10-minute break to admire its antics.
A few more first impressions about orienteering:
I’m talking real weasels, not the metaphorical kind who always seem to be in the men’s room when it’s their turn to buy a round of beers. I’ve never seen one in the wild, or even on somebody’s blog, until the past two days, when I’ve seen two (two posts; might be the same critter).
One was spotted yesterday on the Tomales Point Trail by Dave Miller of the recently discovered Bay Area Outdoors and Beyond Blog. He also got to see some real life elk combat (though his photographic luck is about like mine — fuzzy in the clutch).
The other was on hardcore Oakland hiker Timecheck’s blog. He also saw a skunk, and his hiking partner captured a nifty video of the weasel, bobbing and weaving.
Got any recent wildlife shots to your credit? Drop a link in the comments already.
I saw the little black angus calf wandering about, baying for its mom, about 100 yards down the trail. I wondered where mom was because the only time a cow will trouble itself to stop grazing is if you block her view of her baby. Not seeing baby can cause cows to identify the nearest hiker in the vicinity, assign blame, then charge. If you were as dumb as the droppings you leave all over the trails, you’d do the same.
So I wander past the baby and sure enough, just down the trail is Mom. And a friend. A large black head with big bulbous eyes arises from just beyond her tail region and gives the universal “Dude, would you mind?” look known to all guys who stumble into another guy’s amorous action.
So, this is why Mom isn’t milking the brat. Some bull has his nose so far up her fanny she’s getting, well, distracted. The loving couple decided to make their way down the trail in the general direction of the wayward calf. I didn’t wait around for any Discovery Channel moments.
Just another day in the East Bay hills. If the cattle are humping, I’m happy, because it means they aren’t a) pooping everywhere, b) chewing up the hillsides; or c) leaving mud bogs in moist sections of trails.
So what was I doing at Ed Levin County Park, which I once declared one of the worst hiking parks in the Bay Area? Well, I had a vacation day and wanted to try out my new daypack, but didn’t want to drive far. Bovine annoyances notwithstanding, Ed Levin has two things hikers crave: high hills and great vistas.
It also has a mystery — rock walls of unknown vintage — among its hilltops fascinating enough to make the bulls and the butt-burning Jeep roads posing as trails worth the trouble. I paid the walls another visit; I’ll get to that part in a minute.
The hilltops were fogged in for the first hour and a half, but after that the the skies opened and a lovely hiking day ensued. I hiked about five and a half hours; I’m guessing total mileage was about 9 or so.
The only go-to hiking locale at Ed Levin is Monument Peak — 2,000 feet of climb in four miles; not quite as steep as Mission Peak, but promising the added pleasure of an extra mile and a half of climbing. It’s a great a workout. Foggy mornings with clear afternoons in the forecast are among the best times to go, because you’re cool on the way up and warm on the way down, and you experience being on the hill when the fog burns off. Little bit of nature’s wonder in action.
Let’s see some pictures. Here’s a Flickr slide show if you’d rather skip the commentary:
The only thing as dumb as a cow and yet curiously smart enough to stay alive is a wild turkey. They’ll walk right past if you stand still enough.
Young bucks about 50 yards distant in the fog.
Calera Creek is about two miles from the trailhead next to the dog park at Ed Levin. It’s fed by a spring that runs all year, which is good to know if you’re foolish enough to hike here in the summer.
An opening in the fog emerges as I near Monument Peak.
One of the transmission towers.
You can always find cool angles to photograph the tower.
I paused for lunch near the section of the Bay Area Ridge Trail that goes over to Mission Peak. It’s about two miles from here. An out-and-back to Mission Peak from Ed Levin is a tough 12-miler.
Unbeatable view from the Monument Peak summit.
One of the mysterious stone walls near the Monument Peak. Some say these walls were built by Amish farmers in the late 1800s. I find that hard to believe — these seem to be built much more deliberately and systematically than I’d expect farmers to bother with.
And check out these huge boulders: I cannot imagine a farmer moving rocks this large.
Note the consistent height of this section. The stones are generally flat, for easy stacking; they don’t appear to have been piled up from random stones you might find lying in a field. The structure seems architectural, and in places it melds with existing rock formations.
Stone walls like this appeared in the journals of the first European explorers to arrive in the Bay Area. Obviously the walls were not tall enough to keep out any invaders, so they must have been symbolic — perhaps geographical (borders between rival bands) or mystical (burial grounds or religious shrines). I wonder what a core sample would reveal about their age. I can’t help suspecting they’re very old, like Stonehenge or Central American pyramids old. One hole in this theory: why didn’t earthquakes knock them all down?
OK, enough amateur anthropology. A few more pictures and I’ll call it a day.
This lone picnic table is one of my favorite places at Ed Levin. It’s along the Sierra Trail, about a half mile from Monument Peak summit.
Saw a few more turkeys on the way back down.
And this little calf in full cuteness mode.
A few fall colors endure.
Looking back toward the peaks. So that about does it. I always come home from Ed Levin with a fresh slew of complaints, but I always end up with pretty good pictures and stories to relate. I’ve met a host of interesting folks on the trails at Ed Levin. Maybe the park’s inherent issues keep the wannabes away, leaving only the True Hikers. I’m sticking with that theory till next time.
Oh, and about the new daypack: works great. It has a hole for a hydration hose that I didn’t notice the first time I was going over it. Lengthening the straps enough to let the bottom edge rest against the hips makes water bottles accessible with only minor arm gyrations.
Ed Levin links:
Google map to get you there.
Every year my mom mails me a birthday check, which I promptly squander on hiking gear. This way I get to pretend like I’m a smelly, unshaven (but way-cool) outdoors dude who’s so broke he still needs checks from home to avoid dumpster diving at the local REI. Well, the smelly, unshaven part stands.
A previous check went toward one of the last-ever Dana Design packs, a cross-country ski pack that has never seen snow but has carted my hiking kit all over the Bay Area. It’s built to withstand a nuclear blast, and I always look vaguely silly on the trail with all this pack on such nowhere-near-out-of-bounds terrain. So I decided to go smaller and lighter.
After an hour-and-a-half power-shopping session at Mel Cotton’s that would’ve impressed Imelda Marcos, I settled on a nice little number called the Gregory Icarus. Why they thought it’d be neat to name a pack after a mythical boy who plunges to his demise after flying too close to the sun is beyond me, but anyway, that’s what it looks like at right.
It’s quite light, made mostly of silicone-impregnated nylon, and very comfy. Has lots of pockets (though no hole for a hydration hose; not like you really need one but still). Here’s a review by a real live mountain-climber type who likes his fine (more of his exploits here.). It’s about 1500 cubic inches, has a waist belt with a handy ditty pocket, lots of straps and exterior water bottle pockets that are unreachable while you’re wearing it. Goes for $89 but I got it $20 off.
This is my second Gregory pack; I can’t speak for the rest of Gregory’s line but I’ve gotten great fit from mine.
The pack was the main thing, but I also needed some rain gear. I thought about using Mom’s check as a down payment for the latest EVent hard shell (this one by Integral Designs and this one from REI caught my eye) but it occurred to me that I almost never go out in the rain anyway, and all I really need is a nice poncho with eyelets sewn in so it can double as a shelter in a pinch. I picked up this one from Camp Inn for $25 and change.
(Betcha didn’t know Camp Inn has been around since 1915).
Last thing I picked up: a pair of these Kleen Kanteen bottles. I don’t know how much of the concern over plastics leaching into our liquids is justified, but I do know that the plastic taste from Nalgene bottles pretty much always sucks. These are pricey at $17 a pop, but they look like they’d last a lifetime (provided you don’t drive the car over one).
The screw caps are kind of inconvenient to open every time you feel a thirst, so I ordered a “sport cap” that lets you take a sip without unscrewing. Also ordered a sling to keep one bottle where I can reach it and avoid dislocating my collarbone trying to get one out of my new pack. Another rationale for the sling: these things are extremely slippery. When you drop one down a thousand-foot gorge, at least you’ll have the comfort of knowing it won’t shatter when it lands. (Might knock a marmot out cold but hey, anything can happen in the wilderness).
Incidentally, the REI EVent jacket I mentioned (called the Shuksan) is selling like hotcakes — they didn’t have any size larges left in the Saratoga store, the biggest one in the South Bay, on Monday. I was sorely tempted — it really looks like a great jacket — but I decided it’d be more fun to buy a bunch of cheap stuff rather than the Cadillac of backcountry overcoats.
Stumbled across a great photo stream on Flickr kept by a guy who posts under the handle fitznatty. Here’s a slideshow of his stuff:
More great shots at his web site. A fave: his encounter with a mountain lion in Utah.
You don’t have to be Wallace Stegner to get a bench named after you in the Midpeninsula Open Space Preserve, and a fat wallet alone won’t do it, either. In case you wondering how one gets one of those benches, today’s Mercury News has the basics:
So who’s worthy of a bench? The casual Sunday stroller is out of luck. But “exceptional volunteers” who donate time to the district’s docent program are eligible. So are district founders, who in the early 1970s fought off development. Major financial donors may be considered, but there are no guarantees.
“Just giving money doesn’t get you a bench,” said district spokesman Rudy Jurgensen.
In a process akin to a posthumous popularity contest, a three-person panel reviews your name to decide if you were truly “exceptional.” There are no criteria for the number of volunteer hours or years. If approved, it goes to the district’s full board of directors for acceptance.So far, there’s limited seating at MidPen. Only 15 benches now exist; if officials accepted each of the four requests now coming each year, the total number of benches would double in only four years. That might not seem like a lot, but the district is dedicated to keeping the preserves as natural as possible.
You can also have a tree named in your honor, or a whole grove if you donate enough.
Contra Costa Times has the details:
Measure WW put on the ballot by the East Bay Regional Park District got 71 percent of the vote, more than enough to pass the two-thirds majority it needed.
Measure WW will finance $500 million in bonds over two decades by extending a property tax of up to $10 per $100,000 in assessed valuation in almost all the two counties. Only the greater Livermore area is excluded because it was not part of the regional park district in 1988 when voters approved the property tax increase to buy and develop parks.
Passage of Measure WW will enable the East Bay Regional Park District to continue an aggressive land-buying campaign that has expanded the park system by some 34,000 acres in the last two decades. It now has 98,000 acres in 65 parks.
Here’s one of the projects it would fund:
Project Location: Calaveras Ridge Trail
Project Number: 12
Project Description: $11.3 million to acquire open space and park corridor and construct this trail for all users connecting six regional parks along the 680 corridor serving all communities from Sunol to the Carquinez Strait.
Now that would be a nice stretch o’ trail.
Park district’s project map is here.
A guiding principle among folks of Republican ilk is that the faults of these United States of America are vastly overblown and that the nation’s lefty-liberal critics are largely out to lunch.
It took a smart, capable half-white liberal black guy with a funny name and a foreign dad — and the worst Republican administration in a century — to prove them right. Republicans lost the election but won the argument about America’s basic goodness.
I have no illusions about Barack Obama changing the world. He won’t. The world’s too big and too complicated. It’s more important what he represents: delivering on the promise of 1776, that we’re all created equal and that people’s hopes will not be fenced in by royalty, tradition, prejudice or fear.
My main regret of the last eight years is how venal, dishonest and incompetent leaders have exploited straightforward virtues like faith, thrift and patriotism to further their own ideas at the expense of the country. There was never any need to invade Iraq. New Orleans was left to rot because the city had no Republican voters; the Crash of ‘08 was Wall Street’s Katrina. After all this can we really believe they did all they could to prevent 9/11?
Obama executed a brilliant campaign while McCain ran his like Bush ran the country for the last eight years.
I’m proud to see the nation’s reply.
(Well, sign me up for the Bush team: I thought I was posting this on my home page… sorry if you’re all getting fed up with the politics, we’ll get back to hiking pretty soon).