Inverness Ridge Trail, July 4, 2012

Hike 3: July 4, 2012. Habitat: Coniferous forest. Trail: Inverness Ridge. 5.2-mile round trip.

Looking south to Mount Wittenberg from Point Reyes Hill

How better to celebrate Independence Day than by exploring the nearest national park? For once, we got an early start. It was forced on us: Wednesday prayer minyan was on the usual weekday 7:15 a.m. schedule (though we missed starting time by even more than usual), and going home afterward to pack would have cost us an eight-mile backtrack.

Inverness Ridge is known for its Bishop pine forest and for the Mount Vision fire that cleared and charred the area in 1995. We intended an educational trip to check out regeneration after seventeen years. We'd read that Bishop pines actually need fires to open their cones (though maybe more frequent, less intense ones would be better). But what to look for, and where? In the rush to get out the door, we didn't do our homework.

Our hike began at Bay View Trailhead near the top of Limantour Road--the lower part of the ridge. We were a little disconcerted to see that the interpretive signs recommended a "fire hike" downhill on Bayview Trail, not up the ridge. Alice did not want to go down. We hiked in that area once years ago--it must have been before the fire--and it was the one time I remember at Point Reyes being majorly not a happy camper. I was toiling uphill in oppressive full sun, feeling that life was not as it should be and this had to be someone's fault and it couldn't be mine, so who else was handy to blame?  Then we reached Inverness Ridge and suddenly we were traversing soft granite sand under primeval pine trees, and my grumpiness evaporated. So for this walk, the ridge trail is what I wanted.

Stephen likes to say, "Ain't Alice happy, ain't nobody happy." So we set out on the ridge trail, as planned, and were again disconcerted to find that our first mile was open fire road. Hey, where's our coniferous forest?

Yellow-eyed grass growing near a wet spot

The day was bright, but pleasantly breezy, so we didn't mind hiking in the sun. But Alice kept hanging back to photograph common wildflowers, and Stephen made the mistake of standing and waiting, which you know is harder on the body than walking.




After about a mile, the fire road meets the end of a small paved road. From here, a narrow trail takes off uphill under pine trees. We stopped near the bottom for scrumptious peanut butter and cheddar sandwiches on sourdough rye. The climb was gentle; pine needles and downed logs offered resting places. There's a stretch where the trail parallels a car road, and then it passes right alongside somebody's house.

Ceanothus arbor

After awhile you come out into the open, with a view east across Tomales Bay. Then the trail winds back and up through old pine trees. You come out behind some kind of satellite dish installation. Just past this is the junction with Bucklin Trail. We were atop Point Reyes Hill, second-highest point in the park and our turning-around point.

The bench has a plaque honoring Marion Stephens.

Bucklin Trail plunges down the western slope of Point Reyes Hill. If you follow it a little way, there's a picnic table and a bench (we knew this from a previous trip, a couple of Thanksgivings ago, when we took a wrong turn on the way to Muir Woods and drove to Mount Vision instead). The bench is for sitting, and the picnic table is to prop your camera and set it on auto-shoot.

This little guy shared our seat.

From this bench you get a fine sweeping view of the bay and estero coastlines; we could identify Limantour Spit and Sunset Beach, our previous Trails Challenge destinations. But it was so misty that I didn't even try photographing. We took our time there. We watched the wind bow down the grass, and the grass rise. Tree swallows swooped, wheeled and even buzzed us. (Amateur identification based mainly on the flashing blue of their backs.) Then crows came and chased the swallows away. Then the crows went away and the swallows came back. 




The trail down was not the same as the trail up. Facing downhill made the trees taller, and early afternoon shadow made the woods deeper. About halfway down we stopped for an actual nap on the pine needles. We were back at the car in good time, but just too late to catch most of the eateries in Point Reyes Station, which seemed to have reached an agreement to observe a holiday closing time of 3:30.



Practical lessons for road and trail:
1. Five miles is not too short a hike for us to bother with.
2. The afternoon shade at Bay View Trailhead is on the left.
3. Do not buy sandwiches at the deli counter at Palace Market.
4. Bring ibuprofen.

Total habitats visited: 3. Total miles hiked: 15.

Our fundraising page: Foothill Marmots at Trails Challenge

Estero Trail to Sunset Beach, June 17, 2012

Hike 2, June 17, 2012. Habitat: Estuarine Wetlands and Waterways. Trail: Estero Trail and Sunset Beach Trail. Distance: 7.8 miles from Estero trailhead to Sunset Beach and back.

Click here for our fundraising page. 

Footbridge over inlet of Home Bay

Our trail for the second hike ends up close to Limantour Spit, our previous destination, but the drive to the trailhead is much longer, through Inverness and out Sir Francis Drake Boulevard toward the lighthouse, then up a tortuous one-lane road that we thought we'd surely never driven before. But once we got started on the trail, we realized that we'd been here. The trailhead is on a windswept hill; it was so brisk and cloudy that we didn't think of sunscreen.
 
 

Red elderberry in the piney woods

Estero Trail starts level but soon descends through grassland and then a stand of piney woods to a footbridge over an inlet of Home Bay. That's as far as we went on our previous visit. I remembered seeing cinnamon teal then, so it must have been in winter. On this trip, the only shorebirds we saw were seagulls.











Across the bridge, the trail continues alongside the estero, then climbs a hundred feet or so to offer a view of the intricate estuarine waterline.

We saw and heard lots of white-crowned sparrows, as well as other songbirds we couldn't identify. One little streaky-breasted bird had an especially complex and melodious song. Of  course by now (posting this weeks later) we've forgotten how it went.

Still following the line of the headlands, the trail rounds a bend, then intersects with a fence. We had to unfasten a latched gate to proceed. We were now in grazing land (Point Reyes is a mixed-use area, with a number of historic cattle farms). Pretty soon we met some of the resident cows. One of them ran along the hillside, keeping pace with us, stopping and staring in a disquieting way that made us decide to dodge up and along the bluff on the other side.of the trail. We understood her point of view when we saw her suckling a half-grown calf. We returned to the trail and were confronted by another mother, who stood across the narrow trail and faced us down. Umm, now what? How would we feel, explaining why we didn't finish our hike?.

Well, we waited the mom-cow out and soon reached the junction with Sunset Beach Trail. Estero Trail turns inland here and crosses over to the Estero de Limantour inlet. Another day.... This time, we followed Sunset Beach Trail along the estero. After a little more than a mile, the trail dips down to meet the little cove that hosts Sunset Beach. Here the trail becomes narrower, and poison oak begins to encroach. There was maybe a tenth of a mile of trail left, but we decided this would be a good place to have lunch and then turn around. As the sparrow flies, we were just a couple of miles from the far end of our previous hike on Limantour Spit.
 
We were separated from the cove and its putative beach by some hundred feet of wetland. Stephen stayed put while Alice padded out to investigate. Zooming the camera in on the reddish vegetation, she identified the notorious invasive iceplant--the very plant we once spent a strenuous volunteer day pulling up.



As we started back up the trail, the sun came out. And I had a tiny, inchoate trail epiphany. You know how you always want to hike a loop, so you won't just be going back over the same trail? Well, with apologies to Heraclitus, the trail back is not the same as the trail out. You're, d'uh, facing the other way. This time, the sun-soaked prospect into the estero's inlets seemed even lovelier than the mistier outbound trip.

On the return trip, overlooking the footbridge, now with the sun on the water, and with the tide out.

For the last quarter mile or so, Stephen, eager to get back to the car and rest his aching back, leaned into his Leki hiking poles and made tracks that Alice couldn't keep up with. In the home stretch, he was actually running. And then one of the poles got caught in the tall grass at the edge of the trail, and the momentum was too much for him, and he was down. Nothing broken, just some ferocious scrapes to his face and broken glasses. Within a week or two, the scrapes had healed, the glasses were mended, and our mild sunburns had cleared up.

Completed: two hikes in two habitats, ten miles of trail.

Practical lessons for road and trail:
1. Don't. Be. In. A. Hurry.
2. Bring ibuprofen.


Note: Drakes Estero is to become a federally protected marine wilderness at the end of this year, after the expiration of Drakes Bay Oyster Company's lease (the company farms oysters in Schooner Bay, the next arm of the estero over from our trail). Shortly before our hike, Robert Gammon (East Bay Express) published a blistering denunciation of Senator Dianne Feinstein's attempt to get the oyster company's lease extended.


Click here for our fundraising page.

Limantour Spit Trail, June 3, 2012

Hike 1, June 3, 2012. Habitat: Ocean Shoreline. Representative: Limantour Spit Trail.

We set out on our exploration on the first Sunday in June. On our way to Point Reyes, we stopped off in Corte Madera to look for the rare Tiburon Mariposa Lily, which blooms for about three weeks a year. on Ring Mountain and hasn't been seen anywhere else. We saw them! It's a small, inconspicuous greenish-brown flower, unremarkable until you peer into it and see the purplish tracings and deep fringe.

Ring Mountain has many attractions, including a rock where climbers were practicing free-climbing, another with ancient Miwok petroglyphs, and fine views toward the City, Mount Tam, and the east. By the time we'd finished the two-mile loop, we were overdue for lunch, which we ate in the car. Once we'd reached Point Reyes and poked around the Bear Valley Visitors' Center, we didn't have time for a major hike. We settled on the short and accessible Limantour Spit trail, one mile long (a two-mile walk out and back).

Limantour is a beach beach, as in recreation destination, but the beach day was winding down when we arrived at the parking lot. On our way toward the beach, we observed a phenomenon we'd just read about in naturalist Jules Evens's blog: local "dialects" in the white-crowned sparrows' song, with a "burr" at the end. We heard at least two versions (Tuu-wheee-whit-whit-whit-whit and Tuu-wheee-whit-whit-whit-whit-zhrrr).

The Spit Trail runs inside the dunes, looking in toward Estero de Limantour rather than out at the ocean. Purple bush lupine grew in profusion along the trail. In our zeal to complete our Challenge hike fully and fairly, we found we'd overshot and continued past the end of the maintained trail, accumulating excessive amounts of sand in our shoes.
This was a nice walk, but we feel we still need some quality ocean shoreline time. Limantour Spit could count as a general introduction to the Challenge.

Practical lessons for road and trail:
-Next time, get an earlier start.
-If the most convenient exit from the parking lot has a "Do not enter" sign, there's probably a reason.

Our fundraising page: Foothill Marmots at Trails Challenge

Foothill Marmots in 2012 Point Reyes Trails Challenge

We're hiking in the 50th anniversary Point Reyes National Seashore Association Trails Challenge to have fun and raise funds for the Association. Click here for our fundraising web page.

About 100 million years ago, a chunk of the southern Sierra Nevada came loose and worked its way up the coast, eventually latching -- for the time being -- onto the edge of west Marin (description after naturalist Jules Evens). Fifty years ago, the area became part of the National Park system. For almost that long, Point Reyes been the first place we think of going to refresh our sense of connection to the natural world.

In 1964, the PRNS Association was created as a nonprofit partner supporting the park's projects. This year, the Association has set out to raise $100,000 for trail maintenance and education programs through the Trails Challenge, inspired by naturalist Jules Evens' "walkabout" project. Evens has set out to walk all 150+ miles of trails in the park during this year. We wanted to do that too! If our bodies would believe us that we're still thirty-something, we'd give it a shot. As it is, we settled on the Five Habitats option: select trails representing Coastal Scrub, Coniferous Forest, Estuarine Wetlands and Waterways, Grasslands/Pastoral Zone, Ocean Shoreline. We hope to learn a little more about the natural history of the area as we go. This blog is meant to tell more about our progress than will fit on the fundraising page.