Fernandez Ranch Hike and Muir Pass in Deep Snow

The grasses are at their peak, heavy seed heads bowing to the approach of summer.  Time to get outside.  Time to get a look at what’s been growing in our hills, what might be lurking around a bend.  Time to feel your place in it all, and time to let in the final green of spring. 

The cool weather last week was perfect for a hike into one of the best kept secrets, the Fernandez Ranch.  Not that it’s really secret at all, it’s just not very well known, as it was opened to the public only last year.  As you drive out Highway 4, there is a wonderful stretch of rolling hills to the south, just before you get to the town of Hercules.  For years those ridges were threatened with development to the dismay of many in Hercules and Martinez.  Today they remain undisturbed, and best of all, open to the public for hiking and picnicking.

The Land Trust purchased the 700 plus acre ranch in 2005, but most of it remained virtually inaccessible until a long steel bridge was lowered into place two years ago, spanning a deep gorge.  After that, trails were built, picnic areas created, and a parking lot and staging area developed that make the property quite a destination. 

Last Monday, several friends and I got a hiking tour courtesy of Glen Lewis, the ranger for the Muir Heritage Land Trust.  Glen has been involved in much of the improvement on the site, and knows the place like the back of his hand.  Connecting several trails, he took us on a 3.5 mile loop (my friend John carried a pedometer, and swears it was 4.5 miles).  You can find a map and brochure here. 

The trail begins by following a dense riparian corridor for one-third of a mile on the Black Phoebe Trail, skirting a boundary between pasture and thick forest on either side.  The morning we visited, a red-tailed hawk and a turkey vulture caught the morning thermals making long slow spirals and rising high above our trail. 

We continued with a right turn onto the Whipsnake Trail, making a gradual ascent of the ridge through an oak/bay forest, at times breaking out into open grasslands.  This trail cuts across the center of the property, and the views both east and west are composed of mostly protected land.  We could hear a pack of coyotes yipping as we hiked, but they kept just out of sight.    

Nearing the ridge, we turned left onto the Woodrat Trail, which is part of the Bay Ridge Trail, and wound our way up to the boundary with the East Bay Municipal Utility District, Pinole Valley Watershed.  With a ten dollar pass, you can continue the Bay Ridge Trail for many miles on watershed lands.

Looking north, Glen pointed out the boundary of another recent Land Trust purchase, not yet open to the public, known as Franklin Canyon.  At over 450 acres, it will add some serious hiking and protected habitat to the open space.  The future of this property was hotly debated in the Town of Hercules for years, and it nearly became a large hotel and conference center.  With the Land Trust’s purchase, that debate has ended and after some improvements have been made, and trails created, the parcel will be opened to the public sometime in 2012.

Great hiking is always a good reason for preserving land, but these two purchases also provide habitat for the endangered Alameda whipsnake, and the red legged frog, and many other wild creatures.  At several places along the trail, Glen pointed out the nests of the dusky footed wood rat, also known as a pack rat, and told us of the recent sighting of a juvenile golden eagle from the trail. 

Near the ridge, we turned right onto the Windmill Trail, and headed down, past the old windmill.  The well is now solar but the picturesque old steel remnant of ranching days still spins in the breeze.  Mostly hidden by grass and willows are three large, black water tanks, filled from a year round spring up canyon, and the solar well.  The water is piped across the property to hundreds of native trees and shrubs that have been planted as part of an extensive restoration undertaken by the Land Trust.

We continued down hill to the Homestead Picnic Area, the site of one of the original homesteads on the ranch, and eventually found ourselves back at the bridge and parking lot where we had begun.  The loop we hiked is not difficult, and is quite beautiful throughout. The lower trails from the parking lot are all ADA accessible, wide and nicely graveled. Pick up a brochure and map as you enter and then just follow a trail and start to explore.  I’ll be back to do it again soon.  

As with any grassland trail in California, keep an eye out for ticks.  They tend to sit on the very end of the long grasses that hang into the trails to grab hold of your pants as you hike past.  Light colored pants are best as you can see them easily.  If you can, tuck your pants into your socks as this creates a barrier.  We brushed quite a few of them off our legs as we hiked on some of the smaller trails.  Keeping to wide trails and dirt roads lessens the chances of them hitching a ride on you, as you don’t touch the tall grasses so easily.

The Muir Heritage Land Trust is one of those local organizations that is worth all the support you can muster, as they’ve been incredibly successful at preserving land from Lafayette to Martinez and Hercules.  If you’ve got time to spare, they’ve got work projects that could use your muscle. Best of all, you’ll meet some of the finest folks in the area.  If you’re looking for a tax deduction, they’re a registered non profit organization, and will make good use of any money you can spare.  You’ll have the satisfaction of knowing it’s going toward the preservation of our wild and ranching past.  And you can hike whatever they manage to buy. 

Pacific Crest Trail Stories: We woke in a small meadow at the bottom of LeConte Canyon, several hundred feet below snow line and therefore in early spring.  It would be several hours before the sun had risen high enough to penetrate to the bottom of this deep cleft in the Sierra.  June 20, 2010, but the date didn’t matter as much as our elevation.  The seasons changed in a matter of a few miles of trail as we hiked up into deep winter, or down into spring, sometimes crossing the seasonal boundary several times in a day.  

The young grasses of the little meadow were surrounded by dense lodgepole pine, then the sheer granite face of the canyon walls, cascades and waterfalls in all directions.  The heavy runoff filled the streams and tributaries to bursting and trickles and creeks crossed the trail every few yards.  

Hiking up canyon the sounds of falling water were with us all along, as was an intermittent, “boooom, boom boom!”  It was loud and far off, but the deep, penetrating base thrumming of grouse followed us all the way up to snow level.  Along with the greening of the world was the awakening of animals who found their way out of burrows and dens, or began their seasonal migrations up, following the new growth.  I would hear that thrumming in the mornings for many hundreds of miles until it left us somewhere in the Trinity Alps in Northern California, where we finally reached summer in the high country. 

We were far from summer as we began the ascent out of the canyon toward Muir Pass.  Intermittent patches of snow became more frequent, and larger until the forest trail finally disappeared for good.  We would not see it again until much later in the day on the far side of the pass and it was topo maps and compass until then.  

Following the Middle Ford of the Kings River by the usual trail meant fording it five times before it’s headwaters at Helen Lake, at the base of the final ascent to Muir Pass. On the other side of the pass is Wanda Lake.  These are a very important family grouping.  For those of you from Martinez who have hiked Mts. Helen and Wanda near the John Muir National Historic site, these are of course his daughters.  In town they are two lovely little hills where he took them walking when they were little.  Here in the height of the mighty Sierra, the import of the man takes on a more appropriate grandeur.  

We stayed to the river as much as possible, but we didn’t need to cross it five times as the snow became its own trail.  What I know as long switchbacked slopes when the trail is clear, were simply vast, steep snow fields we needed to climb.  Crampons and microspikes, but thank God we didn’t need ice axes on this one. 

Up, and further up we climbed until the world of snow and granite cliffs smoothed out and led to one final great tilted white sheet that stretched over the horizon.  Appearing in the middle of it was a small tip of stone, which broadened into an umbrella of stone, then a dome, and finally the full stone, Muir Hut.  We were there, another High Sierra Pass done in early season.  

The relief we all felt every time we summitted a pass was incredible, and Muir, though not life threatening, was no different.  It was always a time of celebration and joy, of screaming and laughing, and this time we even had a building to explore.  Erected by the Sierra Club, and the National Forest Service in 1930, to commemorate Muir, it is a welcome spot to sit out the cold of a storm, or protection from the sun, as on the day we reached it.  

The Muir Hut is an eight sided, stone, conical roofed shelter, so solidly built that like many of the amazing trails carved into the granite fastness of the High Sierra, it will probably remain as is until the next ice age wipes it clean from the rock.  It is a very fitting spot to reflect on Muir, and just what he’s meant for our wilderness and open space in America, and how his preservationist movement has spread world wide.  

It is a beautiful place, just a few feet shy of 12,000 feet.  You could be on top of the world, but in fact you’re only on top of one of many unbelievable spots in the High Sierra.  Our breath is labored at this elevation, but none of us found the climb too tough, or the cold or sun too strong.  It is all worth it.  Our lives reflected in the eons of rock time all around us.  Our small surface scratch on the skin of the planet.  A meagre trail in the snow, uplifting, yet so intense and fraught by our human perspective.  Our lives seem so real, and so small in the vastness of a high mountain pass.  

Leaving, we descend toward frozen Wanda Lake, but all around us are the reminders of the first explorers who climbed and named this part of the Sierra.  They were scientists and thinking people boldly naming the peaks after some of the most divisive science, and scientists since Galileo claimed the earth revolved around the sun.  There’s Mt. Darwin, the originator of the theory of evolution; Mt. Spencer, the Victorian proponent of evolutionary theory who first coined the phrase, “survival of the fittest”; Mt. Lamarck, whose alternate theory of evolution eventually lost favor to Darwin’s, Mt. Mendel, who began the science of genetics; Mt. Goethe, German poet, philosopher and scientist whose early ideas of plant and animal morphology were later expanded upon by Darwin and others, and the names go on.  And in the middle of it all is The Hermit, a mountain west of Evolution Lake, and at the very head of Evolution Valley, where we finally leave the snow, and reenter spring in the high country. 

Camping on the edge of McClure Meadow in the heart of Evolution Valley, our view is one that is not the most spectacular.  The cliffs are not as sheer as Yosemite, nor even LeConte Canyon where we had begun our day, yet the peace of the place is palpable.  The meadow is large, but nothing like Tuolumne.  Evolution Creek, small by most Sierra standards, slowly snakes its way through the center.  The Hermit rises at the far end but is not towering, as are so many peaks we’ve camped under.  The late afternoon light brings golden hues and a softness to the scene.  In the distance, a lone fisherman casts from a bend in the bank and serenity fills the place.  We each take turns wending our way through the wet meadow, trying to stay on the dry places, to the bank of the creek where we bath for the first time in days.  It’s just been too cold until today.  

As we make dinner and begin to really take it in, Mango walks up to me and says, “You know Shroomer, I think this is the most beautiful place I’ve ever camped.”  I agree, and we continue our evenings.  A short time later, Smiles approaches and in her broken, beautiful French/Swiss accent, says, “Shrooms,” she always had trouble with Shroomer, “I think this is the most beautiful place I have ever camped in.”  Three out of five of us agree, and had I asked, I’m sure Plain Slice and Little Engine would have also.  Not by any stretch, the most spectacular place we’d ever been, just simply the most beautiful.  

“Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.”      John Muir