Trip Report: Skyline-to-the-sea Trail backpack, 9-11 June 2000.

I've lived in the San Lorenzo Valley ("SLV", in Santa Cruz County) for
nearly twenty years, and have intended that "someday" I would hike or
backpack the Skyline-to-the-Sea trail. My trail companion on this
trip is another guy from Apple's compiler group, who had been working
for Apple in Cork, Ireland, for several years, before moving out to
the bay area this past January. Turly has plenty of experience
hillwalking (yes, it's a single word there) in Ireland, and was
interested to see some of the trails in this area. I think I'm about
12 years older and, hmmm, distinctly heavier than he. We're planning
a slightly longer trip for later in the summer, so this is sort of a
warmup trip, checking out and fine-tuning the gear and hiking styles.
I've been working (some) on lightening my backpack load over the past
few trips; I still have quite a ways to go, though.

Summary:
Started in Saratoga (Sanborn-Skyline Park), up to Castle Rock
State Park, and then over to the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail proper,
along near highways 9 and 236, over the ridge that is China Grade,
and then on down into Big Basin Headquarters (BBHQ), and out to the
ocean at Rancho del Oso / Waddell Beach.

Details:

** Wednesday June 7:

We got a nice little late-spring rainstorm on Wednesday, unusual for
this area, but nice.

** Thursday June 8:

Thursday night after work, Stan gave us a ride from Apple over to
Saratoga, and my faulty, vague recollection was that the park was just
a flattish mile from where the Sanborn Road comes off of Highway 9.
So, at about 7 pm, we started from about 900 feet elevation, hiking
along that "flattish" mile, which turns out to involve some climbing
after all. It wasn't too bad, though. I found some trail schwag
right away -- a nice, compact set of Allen wrenches. I carried them
all the way home.

We continued our unexpected climb up along the road, then onto the
campground's first driveway (closed to cars) to the walk-in
campground. We saw about six deer in the large grassy field. There's
a sign at the start of the campground warning about raccoons. Someone
had scratched out the word "raccoon" and replaced it with "DIRTY
THEIVING VARMINTS!" Hiked up along the road that continues (still
climbing) along the linear campground. A ranger drove by, so we paid
up. No other campers in the whole campground. Everything was
somewhat damp from yesterday's rain. I think our camp site was at
around 1500 feet or so. One of my biggest concerns about this trip
had been the climb that we would face the next day, but the evening's
45-minute ascent had cut off almost a third of it already!

Turly got some practice setting up his new tent. I boiled some water
and we choked down a freeze-dried dinner. In my quest to make my
setup lighter, it turns out that I had forgotten to bring any
silverware. Turly lent me a fork. I got to try out my new Photon
light -- a very small, light flashlight that's mostly just a bright
LED and a battery. It's maybe an inch in diameter and about a
quarter-inch thick. It worked very well, and I'd be confident
taking just two of those on a backpacking trip instead of the
larger, heavier backup light that I did bring.


The campground is in a narrow canyon with thick mixed forest. The
half-moon was high in the sky at dusk, and lit up a couple of
clearings nearby, but it was otherwise pretty dark. Nice and quiet,
but the ground is extra hard -- neither of us slept all that well.


** Friday June 9:

It felt damp in the morning; and the tents' rainflies were moderately
wet, but seemed to keep everything else dry enough. Friday was going
to have been a big uphill, but I was less concerned about that after
our climb last night. We hit the trail about 8:00am, and quickly
started seeing some poison oak, so I got the chance to point out what
they looked like. Saw three newts on the way up the hill. I got one
of them to walk through the basket of my ski pole. The trail does
some ridgeline climbing and traversing, hits another trail, drops into
a stand of redwoods (Todd Creek?) and then hits the Skyline Trail,
which is pretty much the top of the climb.

We got up to the ridge shortly after 10:00am, and decided to go ahead
and do the Summit Rock loop. First, we crossed Highway 35 to take a
look at the views west over the SLV. We got to Summit Rock before
11:00am, and saw the first other people we'd seen on the trail. We
spent some time resting and admiring the views, both far and near. It
was very clear, and the views extended from north of Mount Diablo,
south past Mount Hamilton on the east side and Loma Prieta on the
west. Almost all of Silicon Valley is spread out in between. Part of
highway 85 is end-on to the rock, so it's very identifiable. Tried to
pick out Apple's buildings, but couldn't quite. Saw a couple of
Red-tailed Hawks soaring -- well below us. There are a couple of
vineyards visible on ridges nearby.

The linear trough of the San Andreas Fault is pretty clear just (about
800 feet) below this rock -- it is why upper Stevens Creek and Sanborn
Creek flow where they do. North and northwest, you can see the classic
Northern California hillsides (tan dried grass, interspersed with
stands of oak, pine and redwood) of Black Mountain / Table Mountain and
some closer ridges. A nearby firing range made some racket.

Returning along the other side of the Summit Rock loop led us over
across Highway 35 to the main Castle Rock parking lot. It still being
early in the day, we decided to do most of the optional bits: we looped
past Castle Rock itself, and saw its interesting caves and pockets; no
climbers were practicing there. A big fallen tree nearby was completely
covered with big red ants. After a bit of confusing trail below the
rock, we headed on down to check out the waterfall -- impressive drop,
not so impressive water flow despite last week's rainfall.

Took the upper "trail" over to Goat Rock. In several places where the
sign says "TRAIL", we begged to differ -- it's more like a bit of an
obstacle course. Still, we got to Goat Rock and saw a few climbers
attempting to scale it. We hiked up alongside of the rock and then
(sans backpacks) climbed up the easy side to the top, sat and took
another rest break, with the whole San Lorenzo Valley spread out
below, and views across Monterey Bay to the Santa Lucia range, Cypress
Point (the westernmost part of Pebble Beach, at the edge of the
Monterey Peninsula, about 50 miles away from us), and we could see the
ghostly rounded hump of Point Sur, almost 20 miles beyond that.

Goat Rock's cliffs attract a whole bunch of (I think) Cliff Swallows,
and they were darting all over. We started seeing some Turkey
Vultures as well.

(See <http://www.bahiker.com/castlerock.html> for some nice Castle
Rock area photos and a good description of a shorter hike in the
area. If you have Quicktime 4.0, you might want to check out the
interactive panorama from Goat Rock, at
http://www.virtualparks.org/places/Q17013-detail.html ).

Got to talking with a young climber, he turns out to be a
neighbor of a friend of mine.

Rested, we headed over to the "Interpretive Shelter", a pergola with
some nicely-done, informative displays about the area's wildlife,
history, geology, etc. We then walked down through one of the most
amazing widespread stands of mostly-madrone forests I've ever seen --
homogeneous forests of hundreds of madrone trees, instead of the more
common stands of one to five or ten that you tend to see among the
oaks and redwoods in this area.

We arrived at the Castle Rock campground by 3:00 pm. So much for the
"long day of climbing" I had feared. We camped among the manzanita
and madrone chapparal/forest sites there. This is a real nice
campground -- thirty or more sites, with *maybe* one other party (we
heard them but never saw them). Very nicely separated by the thick,
unusually tall chaparral. After some picnic-table naps, wanderings,
early dinner, attempted phone call, etc., we were in the tents by
7:30, despite the fact that it was still light out.

A ranger came by asking for money; I explained that I had sent in
the camping fees along with the reservation fee. No problem. Slept
much better this night.

** Saturday 10 June:

After such an early "lights-out", I was awake before 6:00am, and we
made a leisurely start, getting onto the trail before 8:00. This was
the longest scheduled day, about 15 miles. We headed down the fire
road towards Saratoga Gap, and then onto the nice, narrower Travertine
[?Springs?] Trail that traverses across a couple of creeks and the
headwaters of the San Lorenzo River, before reaching the Saratoga Gap
Toll Road. Some mudslides along that road have made it impassible for
autos, but there are some incongruous road signs remaining, some
decrepit bridges, and a weird little pond or two. The poison oak was
somewhat more prevalent on this leg of the trip, but we managed to
avoid it pretty well. Along here we were passed by the first other
person we'd seen on the trail; we would continue to see people every
once in a while for the rest of the way down to Waterman Gap Trail
Camp -- mostly cheerful, friendly day-hikers and unhappy-looking,
unfriendly runners.

We took the Toll Road on down to Beekhuis Trail, and climbed that
briefly, to its junction with the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail proper.
(Our route has allowed us to skip approximately the first three or
four miles of the official S-to-the-S route.)

Somewhere along last night or this morning, we saw our first snake --
Turly mentioned that it was the first one he'd ever seen in the wild
(thanks to St Patrick!).

This section of trail stays within 150 feet of highway 9, traversing
below and south of the highway. As we were moving along and listening
to the Saturday traffic start to pick up on 9, we were joking about
climbing up to the road and hitch-hiking down to Waterman Gap. So I
said "Why don't we just drive?", because we had just come across a
fairly new-looking car just below the trail, about 80 feet below the
highway. Windshield had a broken/shattered section, but the rest of
the car looked fine except for its location. We were exclaiming about
it, checking it out to make sure no one was still in it, when a voice
from above called down "We've already taken care of it." A couple of
Highway Patrolmen were standing on the road, about 80 feet above us.

Hmmm. Cars falling onto you. A backpacking trail hazard I had never
even considered! A bit later, there was an old station wagon below
the trail; that one's even old enough to have been mentioned in
another S-to-the-S trip report, from 1997 (Karl Brandt's TR, at
<http://www.stanford.edu/~kbrandt/backpack/skyline.shtml>). There
were also a few unidentifiable car fragments, and more poison oak.

It was probably somewhere along this stretch that we started to see
evidence of wild pigs -- dug-up, messy troughs next to the trail or a
bit farther away. I gather the pigs would be looking for truffles if
we were in France :-). (Actually, they're looking for "bulbs and
grubs and small animals", according to "The [Menlo Park, Atherton,
Portola Valley and Woodside] Almanac". See
<http://www.calmanac.com/morgue/2000_03_15.pigs1.html>
for some detail about these pests.)

Got down to Waterman Gap Trail Camp. Saw a grim-looking woman heading
out to go running. There's a surprising amount of poison oak growing
right there at the Trail Camp. We rested, rehydrated; saw a guy with
a cigar, who had stayed there last night and was headed to BBHQ's Jay
Camp today, like we are.

We crossed Highway 9 near its junction with Highway 236 at Waterman
Gap, and dropped down to the road that goes north from there. By the
way, the map shows that road as turning into "Old Haul Road", a public
trail that goes along Pescadero Creek, in Portola Redwoods State Park.
Up here, though, there's a sign that says

DO NOT ENTER
DO NOT ASK

We crossed 236 and in about a mile joined back up with the Saratoga
Toll Road, coming up from the SLV. We soon crossed back over to the
north side of 236. We passed a friendly black family out for a day
hike, resting in a cool, shady spot. A few downed trees required a
couple of detours; fairly soon, they passed us, on their way to BBHQ.

Along this stretch, you keep crossing roads that look like 236, but
area really just (even) smaller roads/driveways that come up from 236.
But eventually, you really do cross 236, and then maybe a mile later
come to a junction with the "Ridge Trail", where our trail climbs back
up across 236. Off in the forest somewhere, we heard a really loud
"MEEEOOOOWWWWWWW!", sounding as if made by a 400-pound house cat. We
never did figure out what was really making that sound. The trail
here climbs a bit, and then crosses the ridge at China Grade road, and
we took a nice break in the sun. This is right about at the border of
Big Basin State Park.

The character of the land here is completely different ... it's
surprisingly dry, low chapparal, with wider-open views instead of the
thick second-growth redwood forest that we had been in. By contrast,
there were very few redwoods on this side of China Grade; mostly
pines. There are some interesting sandstone outcroppings here.
Instead of the many caves and pockets like the tafoni formations of
Castle Rock, these ones were more like large sloping sheets of
sandstone, with occasional viewful high spots you can climb out onto.
They reminded me of similar granite sheets in the Sierra. (If you
want to see one of these close up, Big Basin's most auto-accessible
spot like this is called "Slippery Rock", and is above Sempervirens
Falls, near BBHQ.)

We were seeing more and more people as we traversed and descended,
partly along a very thin ridgeline, with about a 150-foot dropoff on
the right. As we dropped deeper into the Opal Creek drainage, the
pines gave way to more and more redwoods. We crossed a tributary, and
then descended along Opal Creek to arrive at HQ somewhere around 4:00
pm. For me, that's not too bad for a 15 mile day with still too much
weight ... both in the pack and on the body. We rested, drank some
sodas and beer from the store, then went over to Jay Trail Camp to
claim a site and set up our tents.

My wife & son met us at the park headquarters a bit later that
afternoon, and they brought beer, pizza, firewood, and dessert. So we
had very a fun visit over at one of the picnic areas. Can't beat that
for the middle of a backpacking trip! Turly and I kept one beer each,
and carried them the rest of the way to Waddell Beach.


** Sunday 11 June:

Slept real well that night; got moving a bit later than yesterday. We
had decided to take the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail itself along here,
rather than the hillier-looking and longer Sunset Trail. (That latter
option goes past a couple more waterfalls.) The trail from Park HQ
climbs a few hundred feet to Middle Ridge Trail, then makes a mostly
gradual descent along Kelly Creek and West Waddell Creek. Saw quite a
few day hikers along here, and maybe one or two groups of backpackers.
This whole stretch is shaded by redwoods.

We got to Berry Creek Falls around noon, dropped the packs, and took
the short detour up to its observation deck, and then above the falls
a ways. I think this was the first time I'd ever seen the sun shining
directly on the waterfall. It was at its best, with lots of water in
the creek and dripping from the moss and ferns on either side.

After a brief break, we headed on back to the trail. There's a set of
bicycle racks along here, and we shared the wide dirt road with
bicyclists for most of the rest of the day. The last four or five
miles were fairly uneventful, as the trail is pretty flat and the
creek and valley stay pretty similar for most of it. The last half
mile or so has hikers climbing up off of the road to a high,
canyon-side detour with some nice views of the ranch area and the
ocean, before it drops back down to Rancho del Oso and Waddell Beach.
We got there at about 4:00, and just barely had time to drink our
warmish beers before the Santa Cruz County bus showed up. Got on the
bus (route 40) and took it to downtown Santa Cruz, got onto the 35
bus, and rode it home!

All in all, a fun getaway.