By Memorial Day, the browning of the California hills is
complete. A walk across its oak-dappled grassy slopes means nothing
but heat, dust and socks full of burrs.
Right? Wrong, very wrong.
By Memorial Day, the browning of the California hills is complete. A walk across its oak-dappled grassy slopes means nothing but heat, dust and socks full of burrs.
Right? Wrong, very wrong.
For years, I had allowed the view from the valley floor to convince me the charms of a California spring had passed by late May. Surely, no flowers persist up there along that parched hillside. In fact, I would argue the spring flower show is at its height right now.
Early one morning over Memorial Day weekend, I headed toward Gilroy and the Hunting Hollow entrance to Henry Coe State Park. Hunting Hollow offers quick and easy access to a rare Coe Park commodity – flat terrain. If you are looking for a lovely level walk, Hunting Hollow Road (3.2 miles long) follows a creek that divides the abrupt topography all around. But, as always, the rewards lie above, and there are a number of trails that head up Steer Ridge on your left.
Just less than a mile from the parking lot, as I approached the old windmill, I turned left at a sign post for the Middle Steer Ridge Trail. At first, the trail traces a lovely cool slot that follows the still-wet seasonal creek descending Braen Canyon. Then, the inevitable – up, up, up at an angle that shows little regard for your struggle with gravity.
Many of the trails in Coe Park follow roads left behind by cattle ranchers, who were less concerned with the aspect of the route than with the ability to spot their inventory in the creases of the hills. The price is a pounding heart and heaving lungs. The reward is that you are always poised on the edge of infinity.
Lilies, lilies everywhere. As I climbed above the creek bed, Ithuriel’s spears, with their umbels of blue blossoms atop a naked stem, were everywhere in the shade of the oaks. Here too, were the aptly named fairy lanterns with delicate white blossoms that bob and dangle like a fixture at the Japanese Tea Garden.
But the flowers without peer for their exotic elegance are the Mariposa lilies. If you have never stuck your nose down the throat of a mariposa lily, you are missing lush beauty that seems more suited to an equatorial rain forest than a parched brown hillside across town. Two equally stunning species are now in fresh bloom: yellow mariposa lily (Calochortus luteus) and white mariposa lily (Calochortus venustus). Each blossom is a cup formed by three broad petals that have furry nectar glands at their base and an impressive array of colored hairs, blotches and streaks.
Steer Ridge Road and Bowl Trail run along the crest of Steer Ridge and connect the various trails that climb out of the valley below, allowing a hiker to create any number of loops. I turned right when I met Bowl Trail and traversed to Lyman Willson Ridge Trail for my descent back to Hunting Hollow, a 6-mile loop in all.
The steep climb and the flowers will tend to keep your head down, but remember to look up and over the hills to Monterey Bay and points south. The views get better with each step.
To get to the Hunting Hollow entrance to Coe Park, exit U.S. Highway 101 at Leavesley Avenue. Go east to New Avenue. Take a left there, a right on Roop Road, then go, go, go past Coyote Reservoir and Canada Road until you see the entrance on the right.
NOTE: Ron Erskine will be giving a one evening Introduction to Backpacking class through Gavilan College Community Education on July 7 from 6:30-9:00. To enroll, call (408) 852-2801 or visit www.gavilance.com.
