Purisima Creek Redwoods, Half Moon Bay



This week we decided to hike the Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve, near Half Moon Bay. You can reach the park by taking 92 West to Half Moon Bay. Then you take Higgins Canyon exit at 1 South, which leads a very narrow road for 4.2 miles to the trailhead on the left side of the road. This park has 4 entrances. We chose the trailhead at Higgins Canyon entrance. This parking lot only caters for 8 cars at this entrance.


There are many trails options within the park. We decided to do a loop hike including Bald Knob (2102 feet elevation). The trailhead is at 400 feet elevation. The weather was cloudy and little chillier with temperatures in mid 50s. We started our trek with a flat mile long Purisima Creek trail. The landscape was extremely green. This park gives you a feeling that you are hiking in a dense rain forest. The stroll was along the water stream was extremely pleasant. My son and me crossed a slippery fallen tree bridge over the water stream for fun.  We saw the first the banana slug on the tree.  We had no idea that we would see later thousands of big and fat slugs over the whole trail.  After a mile from trailhead, we turned right on Borden Hatch Mill Trail. This is a moderate climb for next 2.5 miles covered with towering Redwoods.  On the way we observed few slow moving lizards. Typically the lizards move rapidly as you approach them.

Since we wanted to climb the Bald Knob, we took a right turn on the narrow Bald Knob trail. On this trail you see many trees covered with green moss.  First time on this trail after 4 miles of walk, we saw open sky for a very short duration.  After another 1.3-mile hike, we reached a junction where few trails meet including uphill to the Bald Knob, Irish Ridge Trail. We went up another 300 feet for next quarter mile to the top. Contrary to the name, the top was covered with trees. We spotted beautiful red flowers among the green leaves.  We spent few minutes at the top, had some snacks.





We started our return journey on the Bald Knob trail. We connected to Grabtown Gulch Trail via Borden Hatch Mill trail. The Grabtown trail is very steep for 1.5 miles. Luckily we were descending on this trail. We crossed a old steel bridge on the Grabtown Gulch before connecting back to Purisima Creek trail. From the junction the trailhead is 1.05 miles. I would rate this hike a mild to moderate difficulty. According to my NewYu, we walked 9.35 miles with elevation changes about 1700 feet. 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mt. Diablo State Park

Image
Surprisingly for the first time after summer break we had weather that was in the low 70s on the first Sunday of this fall. We decided to take advantage of good weather and hike up challenging Mt. Diablo Summit. Mt. Diablo height is 3849 feet. The hike starts at 400 ft level. We reached the North entrance of the park at 9.15 am. We checked the map at the ranger station, where the ranger suggested us to take gradual hike route Coulter pine trail instead of usual Mitchell Canyon route.   After stretching a bit, 3 of us started our 7-mile uphill hike. Since the weather was nice and initial slope was mild, we were covering the ground faster. Soon, we took the fire road, a downhill path; causing us to loose whatever height gain we had gained earlier. After a half-mile trail on fire road, we soon reached the back creek tail. This was a very steep uphill hike for next 2.5 miles. Even though this trail is in open, it is a very narrow trail through 5-6 feet tall shrubs.   As we
Read more

Windy Hill Open Space Reserve

Image
Hike Date: 10/23/11 This week we decided to hike Windy Hill Open Space Reserve. We reached there by Highway 280 taking Alpine Road exit to Portola Road. There is a nice parking lot accommodating 30 cars at the trailhead. The day was clear and temperatures in high 60s. The trail starts behind the restrooms. The trailhead is around 600 feet elevation. In 0.1 miles from the entrance we came across a nice and small Sausal Pond.  We took the Ridge Trail along the pond. In 0.6 miles you come across many forks on the trail. The trail does not gain much overall elevation change but goes up and down. We always kept the left and in 1.2 miles we merged into Eagle Trail, which ascends mildly. Eagle Trail goes along the Alpine Road for 0.7 miles along one side and a creek on the other side. At the end of Eagle Trail there is another entrance to the park. At this entrance we crossed the bridge on the creek and got on to Razorback Ridge Trail. This trail ascends very steep in the dense tall Redwo
Read more

Lake Ilsanjo, Annadel State Park

Image
I happened to be in Santa Rosa and had few hours of free time. Hence, I looked around to see where my son and I could hike. Google showed that Annadel State park was nearby. We decided to give the place a vist. The park has many trails and loops. We decided to do combination of loop trail for Lake Ilsanjo. While entering the park we saw a parking lot where lot of cars were parked, and we also parked our car there. The actual entrance of the park was about half mile from there. We realized that most of bicyclists park their cars there and cycle around the park. At the park entrance, we checked out a map and decided our route. We started with Channel trail at the trailhead. This trail goes alongside the road. After we 0.3 miles the trail turns right and starts a gradual ascent. After another 0.7 miles, the path forks, where we decided to take a left on the North Burma trail. On this trail we saw many live oaks, black oaks, and madrones. Around the end of the Burma trail, we saw a big g
Read more