Starting three weeks ago, we determined that we will attempt to cover every trail in Point Reyes National Seashore. We have already hiked a great many miles in this very large (~12 x 20 miles) park, but there are "more than 140 miles" of trails, so we have plenty more yet to go. Having highlighted previously-hiked trails on a topo map, we're now highlighting the rest week by week.
Each hike in Point Reyes has a unique character, based on the actual trail, time of year, day of the week, time of day, and what you had for breakfast (not to say how much you drank the previous night...). Besides containing several different climatic zones from near-desert to near-rainforest, Point Reyes is also host to weather that can change radically in fifteen minutes, or in a mile's walk.
If you have any interest (and Adobe Acrobat) a great zoomable map is here.
In the past three weekends, we've done almost 30 miles of new (to us) trails. Each of our hikes the past three weeks has been a climbing-and-descending loop.
This time, we overdid it a bit, hiking a roughly (and I do mean roughly) 12-mile loop from the Palomarin trailhead at the south end of the point, up the Coast trail to Lake Ranch Trail (which climbs some 1000 feet in about 3 miles) to the Ridge Trail (which hovers around 1200 ft for two miles, then descends 1000 in another three miles). We did most of the Coast Trail a couple of years ago when we backpacked three days up the south coast of the Point on vacation. The Lake Ranch trail was a delight. Mostly wide (so we can walk side by side) and with no pedestrian traffic besides us (we passed two guys on horses at one point), the trail rises from near sea level to the top of the ridge, with amazingly lush growth all around, and even a small lake at the top. (Considering it doesn't normally rain all summer here, and indeed hasn't rained since June this year, lushness at the top of a ridge is really unusual.) Lots of ferns and green grass, and somewhat muddy stretches of trail, occasional creeks to be heard babbling just out of sight. It's a gentle climb, compared to the last two weeks, and very enjoyable. Making the Ridge Trail, we begin a long - and later, painful - descent down the length of the ridge back to the car. Again, there are places where the underbrush is so dense you can't see very far into it, and so you hear occasional scrabblings and skirmishes just beyond where you can see, and there's the pretty much constant feeling that a whole menagerie of wildlife is watching from behind the bushes, stifling giggles as you pass. We pass only one other pair of peds, hiking up the trail in the opposite direction, all decked out for capital-H "Hiking," what with their shorts and tall socks, and their telescoping walking sticks (for which I see no real valid use, other than to look like a hiker). Compare and contrast with us: jeans, tennies, day packs, and baseball caps. Two or three groups of equestrians pass. (Tourist Note: If you visit, you can rent horses at the Five Brooks stables and thus do most of these trails without breaking a sweat.) My right hip starts to hurt after about five miles generally, mostly on downhills, mildly at first, that ball-and-socket joint grinding every time my right foot lands. By the time we finish the 5-1/2 miles and 1000 feet back to the car, I'm walking like Stephen Hawking on a good day, or Quasimodo in a bad movie. And cute telescoping walking sticks would not have helped in the least.
But it is tremendously fulfilling to "get" another several miles of previously untrodden trail, and truth be told, we now have most of the major trails, and it'll be just bits and pieces from here.
