Walk About Martinez

It all started with an email from Zinger.  He’s one of the Pacific Crest Trail hikers who came to Martinez at the end of February for a tour of the John Muir House, and a BBQ at my place.  He wanted a recommendation for a good place to do a short backpack trip to test out some new gear before his start on the PCT at the end of this month.  Skyline to the Sea, and Henry Coe State Park were my first choices.  When he picked Henry Coe, I volunteered to go along, as I hadn’t been back there since just after the Lick Fire of 2007, but I remembered that even then it was gorgeous in spring.  It was more than gorgeous, in three days of backpacking this week, it just knocked my socks off!

Twenty-five miles as the crow flies from downtown San Jose, and part of the Diablo Range, Henry Coe is a world away.  At 87,000 acres, it’s second only to Anza Borrego State Park in size, and like Kings Canyon National Park, it’s primary reason to be, is to preserve a wilderness.  You can drive to its edge at a few places, but to penetrate its vastness you have to walk, ride a horse, or be very good with a mountain bike.  In the North end, is one of the State’s designated wilderness areas, Coe Wilderness, more commonly known as the Orestimba Wilderness.  

Henry Coe is a land of deep canyons, oak/bay and pine forests, landscapes of chaparral, and savannas that look like the Serengeti, and all of it ribboned with mountain streams, rushing, clear waters, cutting rocky channels into hundreds of soaking pools. For the better part of three days in the back country I didn’t see a soul but my hiker friend.  It’s the only place in the Bay Area where you can hike for two weeks and never travel the same trail.

There’s good reason to visit just for the day however, as the Headquarters/Visitor’s Center at the Old Coe Family Ranch on Pine Ridge, is a lovely place to spend some time.  It’s got a great selection of nature books, interpretive displays, and the rangers and volunteers we met knew their stuff.  Take a hike in any direction and you’ll find yourself walking through ponderosa pines, dense oak woodland, grass or chaparral, and looking out over breathtaking vistas of a deeply folded landscape, ridge upon ridge into the distance.  The only sign of man in those views is the web of old ranch roads and even smaller single track trails, diminishing in the sweep of mountains and sky.  Henry Coe is huge.   

I left Martinez at 9:30am on Monday, to avoid traffic, and was at the Headquarters, 81 miles away, an hour and a half later.  We met Ranger John Verhoeven at the Visitor’s Center and he gave us an orientation to the park, and recommended that we set our sites on the Orestimba Wilderness given our time frame.  He knew the park well, and was a wealth of information and enthusiasm before we began our hike, a great guy.

First stop, 5.2 miles away, and 1,600 feet down into the Coyote Creek Canyon, was China Hole, and the Narrows.  If you’re a good hiker, this is a great place for a one day jaunt with swimming holes at your furthest point.  If you’ve only got an overnight, then hike down, spend the rest of the day sunbathing and soaking, camp and hike back the next day.  

Rocky crags bracket the entrance to the Narrows, creating some of the best swimming holes in the park. Just remember you’ve got to climb that hill to get out, so plan your day, or weekend accordingly.  Drinking water is an issue, so either carry more than you need, or bring some method of water purification.  

If you’ve got a Girl or Boy Scout Troop, and you're looking for a spring overnighter, this is the place, as the trail up the East Fork of Coyote Creek is dead center in the stream. You’ve got to have good water shoes, or just not mind soaking your hiking boots.   It’s really fun.  The water has lost its winter cold, and is refreshing to wade through.  I took my daughter and her friends here several times when they were little and they loved it.  Camping on the East Fork, they’d chase turtles and frogs, and play in the wet sand to their hearts content, while I got a leisurely several days of watching them, laying on the bank reading a good book.   

From China Hole we hiked up the creek through the Narrows to Los Cruzeros camp, where Juan Bautista de Anza came through on his 1775 exploration of California.  Then it was a steep climb out of the Coyote Creek Canyon toward Mississippi Lake.  We camped not far from Rat Spring.  Not a rat in site, and it had delicious water, and a relatively level place to camp on the trail.  

Tuesday morning was cold enough for a bit of frost, and I had to say goodbye to Zinger who could only do the overnight.  I continued on to Mississippi Lake, where I’m told the fishing is good.  If I was a fisherman, I’d want to hang out here, as it’s solitary, being a good one or two days hike from the Headquarters, and beautiful.   Surrounded by an oak and pine forest, the water was only disturbed by a few ducks mucking about, and the cat tails were filled with red-winged blackbirds.  

Beyond that my hike took me to the Orestimba Corral, at the Southern end of the Wilderness Zone.  The trail was much easier, rolling along the crest of the ridge until it finally dropped into the valley of Orestimba Creek.  From here it followed an old ranch road in and out of the stream past numerous soaking holes and places to just hang out in the sun.  The quiet of the place was only disturbed by the sound of water and bird song over the clip, clip, of my hiking poles.  

Orestimba, according to Wikipedia, means “meeting place” in Yokut, and was an actual spot, now a small unincorporated town, where the Mission Padres met with the local Yokut tribes.  The article cites no references, so I don’t know if it’s accurate, but the Orestimba opened my heart as I walked through it.  Carpets of goldfields dotted with owls clover, larkspur and poppies break out everywhere, and the gnarled black oak trunks seem impossibly clad in new leaf jade.  Turkeys, a covey of quail, and an errant family of black tailed deer met me as I passed through. Signs of a large herd of tule elk were everywhere, but they kept themselves hidden.  It is an area that quiets the soul like none other nearby, and a comparison to the great beauty of the Sierra, or the Cascades is not empty hyperbole.  It is a meeting place of me and beauty.  

I was already sold, I really liked it here, felt the quiet, and was glad to be absolutely alone, when I walked into Paradise Flat.  A tall grass potrero surrounded by thin oak forest, it looked like a slice of the African Veld.  Wildebeests would not have been out of place, or maybe just a herd of our own tule elk.  Surrounded by high ridges and rock formations on several sides, this highland meadow is especially beautiful.

By late afternoon I found myself on Red Creek where the Chaparral Trail branches off and up over seven dry miles of ridge to the East Fork of Coyote Creek.  It was 4pm and I’d done 20 miles, and was feeling my old thru hiker legs kickin’ in.  I could see the trail going straight up a ridge back, nearly as steeply as Burma Road on Diablo, and felt so good, I almost went ahead and climbed it, when I took a look around and didn’t want to leave.  I had the time.  Just camp here.  Level ground, a lovely stream nearby, and such peace.  Just stay.

Next morning, the sky was filled with a thin ocean overcast, blowing in from Santa Cruz.  But just as the sun had risen high enough to reach my tent, those wisps were shadowed by much thicker, Pacific frontal system clouds, and they looked like rain.  It would take some time to saturate the dry trails, but given a real downpour, the streams in the backcountry could become impassible.

I packed up, and headed up, and up, and up.  Henry Coe is a park of steep grades.  This trail was clearly an old ranch road following the ridge line.  Instead of traversing the hill, it just went straight up.  They don’t build them that way anymore.  None of the PCT from Mexico to Canada has grades like these.  This was a workout.  

On the other end I reached Coyote Creek, and began the criss crossing of the stream just as it began to rain.  Up went my trekking umbrella, and eventually raincoat, but that old umbrella made it possible to continue shooting pictures.  Even in the rain, it’s fun to wade those streams.  It brings out the kid in any of us, someone never too hidden in me. 

The final part of any long hike beginning at the Headquarters is the inevitable climb back out, and just for a difference, I took the Poverty Flat Trail crossing the Middle Fork of the Coyote.  A mile up trail I came upon the first people I'd seen since my friend Zinger had left two days earlier, Erik and Kelly from Kentfield. They were just starting out for several days in the back country, but already seemed as taken by the place as I was. Hiking up on the Poverty Flat Trail was a bit shorter than hiking back from China Hole, but in the end, it was much steeper.  Wow what a grade after a long day.  

I was really beat when I reached the Visitor’s Center, where I was met by Lynne Starr, one of the uniformed volunteers, and a great representative, part of what make this state park work.  I’d had such a good time, I had her take my money and sign me up with the Pine Ridge Association, the volunteer organization, that has raised the money to expand Henry Coe State Park from it’s beginnings as a 13,000 acre park in the late 1950s to it’s current size of over 87,000 acres.  Like our own Muir Heritage Land Trust and Save Mount Diablo, it’s a very worthy, and a very successful organization to join or to donate money to.  They help staff the park, perform invaluable trail maintenance, and provide interpretive services and a number of yearly events.  You can find them here. And here is the State Park web site for Henry Coe.

Speaking of money, many State Parks are again threatened with closure, and Henry Coe is on the chopping block.  If you care about our parks, write, call and email your state senator, legislator, and Governor Brown, showing your support for funding our parks.

Give Henry Coe a look if you’ve never been there, it’s surprisingly close, and stunning in it’s vast beauty.

Gear Talk: Part of what makes backpacking fun for me at an age approaching 60, is not doing it the way we used to.  Frankly a 60 lb. pack would kill me nowadays.  When I set out to hike the Orestimba Wilderness, I took food for four days, and my pack weighed 23 lbs. without water.  Now that’s heavy for a real ultra light packer, whose base pack weight without food, water or stove fuel can be as low a five or six lbs.  Mine is heavy by contrast at 15, but that’s still a far cry from the 45 lb. base weights of the past. 

How we do it is to start by focusing on the weight of the big three - tent, sleeping bag and pack.  In the old days it was standard to have each of these weigh sometimes as much as five lbs each.  If you’re looking to buy new gear think weight every time you look at an item, and don’t settle on any one of these items at much over two pounds.  You can find them each at just over one pound, if you know where to look.  Much of the ultra light gear today is made by small niche market companies here in the states.  

REI is one of my favorite stores, but most of these ultra light companies don’t mass market their products in such a way that they could ever produce enough to stock REI’s many stores.  A case in point is Western Mountaineering,  a local San Jose company that produces some of the finest down sleeping bags and clothing to be found in America.  Their 850 fill down bags and clothing were some of the most common on trail last year.  You can find their products at one of my other favorite store, Sunrise Mountain Sports, in downtown Livermore.  They’re loaded with other great backpacking, kayaking and mountaineering gear as well. 

For weight to warmth ratio, you can’t beat down, and there are other fine makers of down gear such as Marmot that use the very light, 850 fill down, and they’re available at the larger stores.  Another option used by many thru hikers is a down or synthetic quilt which can be considerably lighter than a sleeping bag.  I used a home made synthetic quilt for years kayak camping.  It’s much more comfortable than a mummy bag, as you can move around under a quilt. 

Next is a tent or tarp under 2 lbs, and there are a number of small companies out there producing wonderful single and double person shelters.  Henry Shires’ local company Tarptent is a good place to start looking, as is Zpacks, Mountain Laurel Designs, Hyperlite Mountain Gear, Six Moon Designs, maker of my favorite 2 person tent, the Lunar Duo, and LightHeart Gear, which now produces the tent I bought over 10 years ago, and was still waterproof when I used it last year on my PCT thru hike. 

Many of the companies listed above make backpacks, but probably the single most popular packs on the PCT last year were, ULA, Ultralight Adventure Equipment.  I carried their Circuit backpack from Oregon to the Canadian border.  At just over two pounds, it’s the most comfortable backpack I’ve ever used.  Other popular backpacks on trail were made by Gossamer Gear,  and the list goes on.  Search “ultra light gear” and you will find even more.  

If you are interested in going lighter, the place to start is with Ray Jardine’s book, Beyond Backpacking, or with any of his books for that matter.  He is the ultra light adventurer who began the movement toward seriously light gear years ago with the publication of the PCT Hiker’s Handbook.  It’s now out of print, but the newer books are just as good.  Check out his web site. He’s quite a character, and a great place to start if you want to backpack without the 60 lb. packs of old.

Trail Stories: We’ll be back to the ongoing story of our PCT hike through the High Sierra in deep snow next week, when Mango, Smiles, Little Engine, Plain Slice and I decide what to do and where to go, after the air lift rescue of Calorie from Kearsarge Pass.  If you want to catch up on this tale, it begins with the Walk About Martinez column of February 10, 2011, with the introduction of Smiles, our Swiss mountaineer.  To find it, go to News, Browse News, and then click on my name in the contributors list on the left, and all the Walk About articles will come up.  

Now, go take a hike!

"Keep close to Nature's heart...and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”  John Muir