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| Looking toward Limantour Spit from Estero Trail |
For our final official Trails Challenge hike, we chose a route that brought us within hailing distance of our inaugural hike on Limantour Spit Trail, back in June. Scheduling a hike in November had been dicey because of an unusual amount of rain for this early in the season -- not complaining, not complaining! -- but both national holidays turned out to be fair. We'd missed the chance to go hiking on Veterans Day, which was possibly the most gorgeous day of the whole season, but Thanksgiving was still available. Still, we were wondering how the aftermath of the recent rains would affect trail conditions.
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| Youth Hostel |
In order to get an early start on a short daylight period, and because we've long wanted to try it, we stayed over Wednesday night at the Point Reyes Youth Hostel, which is located just across Limantour Road from Muddy Hollow Trailhead.
The familiar drive through San Rafael and along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and Limantour Road felt strange and mysterious in the dark. We arrived at the Hostel about 9:30, just short of the deadline for check-in. The main room was gracious and comfy; two people were playing Scrabble. We were given a spot in one of the new super-green outbuildings up the hill from the main house. It was quite spiffy: electronic locks, automatic lights, dual-flush toilets, a nice kitchen with sinks set up for three-step dishwashing. Our private ("family") room contained two bunks, one with a double-bed lower story. The mattress seemed ominously squishy (very bad for Stephen's back), but proved to be some kind of memory foam that offered good, comfortable support. Alice liked it so much that she wanted to get some for home. Before bed we went out to look at the stars--not many with first-quarter moon and overcast sky, but better than the city. We could make out Orion and the Pleiades, at least. The sharp, fresh chill made me feel like I was in the mountains.
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| flowerpots on Youth Hostel porch |
We were up promptly at 7:15 next morning, but it still took us till just about 10:00 to get on the trail--an hour later than we'd hoped. Meanwhile, over breakfast, we'd met a family (mom and dad and two daughters) who have made the hostel a Thanksgiving tradition.
Alice, still a little concerned about her month-old toe injury, had brought three pairs of shoes on this trip: regular walking shoes, sport sandals for relief in case the regular shoes rubbed too much, and a pair of slightly dressier sandals in the car for going out to dinner, in case both the other pairs got too muddy on the trail. Stephen, however, had brought only one pair for all purposes, and, as we pulled up and peeled out at Muddy Hollow Trailhead and discussed whether to start with Muddy Hollow Trail or Muddy Hollow Road, he began to worry: "Why are we doing this Muddy hike, just after a week of rain?" -- "Well, because we're here now, and which trail in the park do you think will be less muddy?"
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| Muddy Hollow Trail is a road. |
At the head of Muddy Hollow Trail was a sign warning us to be careful because "This is elk calving season." Hmmmm... in November?
As for mud, Muddy Hollow Trail has recently been resurfaced and was not muddy a bit. We were on it for only 0.3 mile, but at least that portion of it is a broad thoroughfare that would be quite at home as an unpaved small-town street.
At 0.3 mile, we turned right onto Estero Trail, crossing a wooden bridge over a creek with no name shown on the map and beginning a short climb among the young bishop pines that have flourished in the wake of the 1995 Mount Vision Fire. Near the creek, the trail had some wet spots, but nothing serious. After that it was perfectly dry. We heard a frog ribbeting. We saw and heard numbers of birds, mostly too elusive to identify; we figured lesser goldfinches, marsh hawks....
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| climbing in the pines |
At the crest of this ridge, about 45 minutes from the trailhead, was a bench with a good view of the sweep of the Drakes Bay shoreline out to Chimney Rock. A red-tailed hawk flew past below us.
We continued down, up around a gully and and down again to an alder-and-elder woodland at the Glenbrook Creek crossing. Here there were some actual mudholes--awkward, but dodgeable. Coming out of the woods, we caught a sneak preview of Drakes Bay and Limantour Spit, then began a gentle climb up the last ridge. The two little white dots on the opposite slope proved to be tule elk, some of a small herd introduced into this area from the Tomales Point population in 1998. Stopping for lunch under pine trees just short of the crest, we saw either the same two or two others grazing a deep green patch in the wetlands below.
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| Predator scat with park service map for scale |
At the crest, we had reached the southern end of our loop and our closest view of Limantour Spit (shown above). The trail follows the line of Limantour Estero, turning back northward well short of shoreline. All along the trail, we'd been noticing predator scat. Here we photographed an especially large sample, positively bristling with fur. Who could this possibly be?
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| Estero Trail going north toward Glenbrook |
The trail heading north was wide and green. Four miles from the junction with Muddy Hollow Trail, Estero Trail turns left to wander another 2.7 miles to the point where we left it on our second Trails Challenge hike, when we started at its other end. This time, we parted with Estero and continued on Glenbrook to Muddy Hollow Road. Somewhere along this stretch, we stalked a middle-sized shorebird with a white tail and a striped face that kept scurrying along the trail ahead of us.
Glenbrook Trail covers just the 0.7 to Muddy Hollow Road, where we turned right and started back toward our trailhead.
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| mushroom on Muddy Hollow Road |
Just as Muddy Hollow Trail is a road, Muddy Hollow Road is a trail. It starts eastish, then turns to parallel Glenbrook Creek (evident in the form of a willow thicket on the right) for something more than half a mile before crossing it and continuing over a slow rise. Muddy Hollow Road was not muddy. However, it did have a stretch wet enough to harbor mushrooms; later, on a higher and drier section, Alice surprised a stray newt.
Shortly after 4:00, the gate at the parking lot came into view. We'd been out a bit more than six hours, it was still daylight, and our feet were clean and dry. Coming closer, we saw that the trail led straight across a free-flowing creek, maybe twenty feet short of trail's end. The two possible stepping stones were jaggedy-looking and would still have required a potentially disastrous leap to a muddy far bank. We'd have to wade.
Well, it was for that that I brought the Chacos, I guessed (my toe had been fine, and I was still wearing the regular shoes). Stephen just waded barefoot. While we sat down and changed our footgear, we were overtaken by the only other party of hikers we met all day. (They'd done the same loop we had, starting two and a half hours later.)
We had just enough daylight left to reach our dinner destination in Fairfax. Driving back, we had another opportunity to realize how long and how wild Limantour Road actually is. Winding over Inverness Ridge feels like a little trip to the mountains.
Practical lessons for road and trail:
1. The Youth Hostel is a viable option
2. One hour per mile of trail can be more than enough for us, even for a "longer" hike. (Though Stephen keeps saying, "We didn't know what the conditions were going to be like. We were lucky.")
3. Sometimes you get lucky.
Total habitats visited: 5. Total miles hiked: 51.
Our fundraising page accepts donations through February 2013: Foothill Marmots in Point Reyes Trails Challenge
