Went on a butt kicker of a hike today with my hiking buddies. We started at Samuel P Taylor Park and hiked the Ridge Trail up and over San Geronimo Ridge and then down White Hill open space ending up at Browns Bridge. It was an 11 mile hike with almost 2000 feet of elevation gain, lots of uphill after a flat start, then undulating hills. I was very grateful at the halfway point when we came across a porta potty, that is not something we usually see on trails and I definitely needed it! The weather was perfect, sunny but cool and the views were outstanding, seeing much of the North Bay and into the heavily wooded canyons leading to Mount Tam, including Kent Lake. I think we went through every kind of Bay Area habitat from redwood trees to coastal scrub to oak woodlands to grasslands – it was amazing.
It’s a surprisingly remote hike for being so close to several towns- for the first half of the hike we only passed three other hikers. The last third must’ve been very popular for mountain bikers, or they just come out later in the day, because we saw dozens of them, often in packs. For the most part they were very friendly and respectful, which we definitely appreciated as that has not always been the case on our ridge trail adventures
We commented that it was the best smelling hike we had been on, several trees had been cut down (assuming the water district was doing some thinning for fire prevention) and then chipped and the chips were spread out at the side of the trail. It must’ve been done recently because the scent was still so strong. And there’s nothing like being in a redwood forest when it’s recently rained – that wonderful damp, earthy smell.
