Half Moon Bay State Beaches
San Gregorio to Pescadero
Pescadero to Pigeon Point
Año Nuevo State Reserve and Coastal Access
APPENDIX 1: TRAILS FOR DIFFERENT SEASONS AND REASONS
APPENDIX 3: INFORMATION SOURCES ON PARKS, PRESERVES, TRAILS, AND TRAIL ACTIVITIES
Preface
Since the publication of the first edition of Peninsula Trails in 1982, the number of parks, preserves and open spaces and the miles of trails increased more than twofold. In the last two years Sue LaTourrette and I visited all the parks covered in the 3rd edition and hiked every new trail in each new park, preserve, beach or bayside. We marveled at the beauty and accessibility of the San Francisco Peninsula—from the San Francisco county line to Saratoga Gap and from San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Therein is a magnificent treasury of open space for all to enjoy. Described here are 19 open space preserves, 2 watersheds, 11 lakes, 4 Golden Gate National Recreation sites, 5 state parks, 16 county parks, 11 state beaches, and 9 Coastal Access points.
We hope this book will help you, the reader, find these open spaces—the tiny coves and broad sandy beaches along the San Mateo Coast, the miles of paved Bayside trails, the route of the Juan Bautista de Anza Trail or the Bay Area Ridge Trail, the newest park or preserve, or the summit route to one of several 2400’+ peaks on the Skyline ridge. Awaiting you is the pleasure of seeing a tiny wildflower brightening the trailside in spring, the discovery of a shaded dell beside a rushing stream, a picnic lunch in a new park, and the sense of wonder when gazing at the vast Pacific from a bluff recently designated Coastal Access.
Jean Rusmore and Sue LaTourrette
Introduction
The Peninsula Bayside, Mountain, and Coastside Setting
Geography
The Santa Cruz Mountains are part of the Coast Ranges of California. They run northwest to southeast, extending from Montara Mountain near San Francisco to Mt. Madonna near Watsonville. A natural divide splits the range into two parts at the Highway 17 pass between Los Gatos and Santa Cruz. The Spaniards called the southern section the Sierra Azul (“blue mountains”) and the northern part, the Sierra Morena (brown or dark mountains). The area covered by this guide centers on the Sierra Morena and includes land from the San Francisco Bay on the east to the Pacific Ocean on the west. The highest mountain in the Sierra Morena, at 2800 feet, is appropriately called Black Mountain.
The east side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, steeper than the west, is cut into deep canyons by streams that empty into San Francisco Bay. The upper reaches of these creeks, which still flow more or less untrammeled down through the mountains and the foothills, are some of the main delights of the mountainside parks. Where these creeks meandered across the Bay plain, they were once the dominant features of the landscape, bordered by huge oaks, bays, alders, and sycamores. Now they have all but disappeared from sight in the flatlands, being mostly confined to concrete ditches and culverts and bordered by chain-link fences. Two happy exceptions are the lower reaches of Los Trancos and San Francisquito creeks, which still retain their parklike tree borders as they wind through Portola Valley and the undeveloped lands of Stanford University. They are the sites of popular creekside trails.
The western slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains are a different world from the eastern side. Very few roads cross the summit; those that do usually follow old Indian trails or Spanish routes or are remnants of former logging roads. Originally thickly forested, the canyons and ridges now support a second or third growth of redwoods and Douglas firs, interspersed with live oak, black oak, tan oak, bay laurel, and smaller shrubs and trees. Some groves of giant redwoods were spared the axe and saw. Toward the Coastside some areas formerly ranched are still open grassland.
Westflowing creeks are generally larger and longer than Bayside streams, due to the heavier rainfall on the Coastside and the greater distance from the mountains to the sea. Present-day trails follow major creeks flowing through state and county parks to the ocean along routes trod by early settlers.
Geology
The Santa Cruz Mountains were formed over the millennia by the uplifting, folding, and faulting of rocks. Frequent earthquakes in the area tell us that forces deep within the earth continue to reshape the land. The San Andreas Fault, which spans the length of California, is the most influential feature of the Peninsula landscape. It runs northwest-southeast roughly parallel to the main and highest ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains, popularly known as The Skyline.
In the 1890s Andrew Lawson, a noted California geologist, recognized the rift valley running south toward Loma Prieta and Mt. Umunhum and north up the Crystal Springs Valley as far as San Andreas Lake, about 25 miles in each direction. He named the fault for the northernmost of the rift-valley lakes. The great earthquake of 1906, centered a few miles offshore and west of San Francisco’s Lake Merced, made the San Andreas Fault famous around the world. A dramatic vantage point from which to view this fault is the top of Los Trancos Open Space Preserve on a fault saddle between the Skyline ridge and Monte Bello Ridge.
Hikers mind their footing on the trail to San Bruno Mountain’s summit.
The Santa Cruz Mountains are very young geologically. The oldest exposed rocks on the Peninsula were formed only 150 million years ago, whereas the oldest known rocks on earth are four billion years old. In spite of its youth, Peninsula geology is extremely complex because the area lies at the boundary between the Pacific and the North American plates. These plates have been (and still are) moving very slowly past each other for the last several million years at an average rate of 1 to 2 inches per year. As a result of movements along the fault, granitic rocks originally formed about 90 million years ago in the area now occupied by Southern California lie deep under most of the land west of the San Andreas fault, and are exposed on Montara Mountain.
From the concept of plate tectonics, and the kind of bedrock formation found in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the following geologic history can be inferred. Between 150 and 65 million years ago, massive quantities of lava flows, red ooze, sand, and mud accumulated in complex layers on the Pacific Plate in a location west of what is now the California coast. These deposits on the ocean floor were hardened to rock, partly crushed and thoroughly mixed as the edge of the Pacific Plate was pushed under the North American continent, thus moving what is called the Franciscan Complex to its present location on the east side of the Pilarcitos and San Andreas faults. This complex is composed of shale, siltstone, limestone, sandstone, chert, and greenstone. Outcrops of these rocks occur on Sweeney and Sawyer ridges, San Bruno Mountain, Belmont Hill, and Monte Bello Ridge.
Serpentine, the California state rock, occurs in outcrops along Sawyer Camp Trail, in road cuts along I–280 from Woodside north, in Edgewood Park, and in scattered locations on Monte Bello Ridge. The linear fault valleys of the Peninsula exist because rock broken by fault movements erodes more rapidly than rock farther from the fault. You can see other
