I shouldered my daypack and stepped onto the Grizzly Gulch Trail
at Henry Coe State Park’s Coyote Creek entrance near Gilroy Hot
Springs.
I shouldered my daypack and stepped onto the Grizzly Gulch Trail at Henry Coe State Park’s Coyote Creek entrance near Gilroy Hot Springs. Ascending trails come in two types: The switchback type and the direct type. Grizzly Gulch Trail is the direct type. After crossing the creek, it goes mercilessly up a steep fall line. But its directness pleases me today since I am carrying a light load.
The road to the trailhead had lifted me above the early morning’s low-lying valley fog. Now, I was climbing into a clear crystalline Saturday. My son Drew and I had climbed this trail on an Easter weekend backpack trip several years ago. We left on Friday evening in order to make this climb in the coolness of dusk. Half way up, it began to snow, and it kept on snowing. The next morning we emerged from our tent and gasped at a sunny view of green oak-covered hills from our tent site to the summit of Mt. Hamilton draped in snow.
As I descended toward Kelly Lake, a shadow cast from overhead passed by me, and I looked up to see its maker. I pivoted to follow a turkey vulture that circled close above as he inspected me. When I turned back around, I startled a Coyote that had been so preoccupied with something on the ground that he hadn’t noticed me even though I was standing only 10 paces away. Equally surprised, I watched intently as he backed away and slowly circled around me in an ever-widening arc, wary but not overly concerned with my presence. When he left, I walked over to where he had been, thinking I might see the remains of a kill. No such luck. It was just a critter hole. He was probably waiting for lunch to pop its head out. Sorry I botched your stake out.
After visiting Kelly Lake, I turned toward home. In the middle of Coit Road above Kelly Cabin Canyon was a rattlesnake – the biggest Pacific rattlesnake I had ever seen. He was four-feet long and as big around as a circle I can make touching the tips of my thumb and middle finger. For five minutes he never moved other than probing the air with his quivering tongue. He blocked half the road so I passed him on the clear half. He didn’t move a muscle. Finally, he tired of the standoff, turned and headed for cover by the side of the road, shaking his many faceted rattle at me though I made no movement toward him. He reminded me of an old man bitterly stomping off as he complained about the degradation of the neighborhood. In a moment, he was three feet from the side of the road, right there, and I couldn’t see him. How many have I walked passed over the years and never known they were there?
Later, descending Grapevine Trail, I passed a level spot with a muddy bog the size of a tennis court. At first I didn’t see it, because it was the same color as the mud. But there, mired in the mud, was the body of a pig. His legs and the lower half of his body were buried, the top half exposed. I was so surprised that I didn’t believe my eyes. Yeah, it’s a pig all right. Is it dead. It hasn’t moved a muscle. Then I saw an ear twitch. Like the rattlesnake, he tired of my voyeurism, pulled out of his cool mud bath and hurried off expressing similar disdain over my presence.
Back home, on the deck, in a chaise lounge. My 11-mile walk left me with an aching body and a dull mind that I was bravely fighting off with a cold beer (a beer with flavor!). But, what a day. It was like a National Geographic special, live and in person. No charge. The only price was the effort. And I didn’t even leave the county.
