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.

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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.