Hiking the Lonely Forest trail in La Honda Open Space Preserve

This weekend, we hiked the La Honda Open space preserve. It is a 30 minute ride from Cupertino and we found parking at the trail head easily. Not many hikers as there was a mist and slight drizzle and a lot of fog on the way.

Reminded me of Windy hill which is also somewhere close by. Weather was good and parts of the hike were in the shade. It actually got quite warm when we went to the base of the vista point.

The normal trail for this place is the Harrington trail. Our friend Deepa, who will henceforth be known as “Lone forest Deepa” made such a pitch for this newly opened trail which would take us to Coho Vista point , that we decided to take a chance and follow her “pdf map” instead of all trails. We went through this trail which had no one on it, to the Madrone trail, then to the starting point for the vista. It was another 1.1 miles one way to the top and we were out of time. So we had chai and came back. Here is a Link to Deepa’s capture of the trail..

It was 9 miles, 1700 feet climb and took us 4 hours including the Chai and photo breaks. We will definitely revisit this in spring when there are flowers. Given this is a new trail we had to watch out for a large stretch. Lots of salamanders and lizards, slugs etc. crossing the trail in the morning.

Here are some pictures..

There were no benches though for a “bench photo”!

Very short video highlight reel..

Definitely recommended for a half day hike on a foggy day! Once you go up it is just beautiful!

Dew magic - Gray whale cove trail, Pacifica

We have hiked Gray whale cove trail once before. We were inexperienced hikers then, confusing bike paths with hiking trails and taking on steep slippery slopes without hiking shoes.

Decided to revisit the trail this weekend with some friends who are not part of our usual hiking group. There were no views. The place was completely foggy once we hit the cloud line. The skies cleared up only when we almost came down. Definitely recommend this as an afternoon hike if scenery is your thing.

That said, our hikes are all about the joking, giggling ladies, taking pictures of whatever comes our way and Chaifies when we reach the summit. This time we had Chai, cookies, pakoras… they all taste divine after hiking a few hours , standing in condensed dew and sweat on a windy summit. There were many bench photos..

The dew and condensed mist made magic. The flowers, the webs, buds.. I was just taking macro shots everytime we stopped. Here are the pictures..

A few other shots..

a short video clip of the foggy experience

Blogging can be fast if you keep at it.. editing photos and videos, uploading them and doing a write up used to be so fast for me.. after a three month gap, takes me longer.. like my yoga teachers say “if you don’t use it, you lose it”. Glad to be writing again.

This hike is tricky at places but strongly recommend with good hiking shoes, having all trails (still two members missed a cut off and kept walking) and taking the safer options. The two folks who kept talking and walked almost a mile ahead and turned back were made to stand up on the bench and do thoppikaranam for ummachchi. The offenders faces have been blocked out like in Indian news media so the blog audience cannot know who they are..

Now I have to be more careful on the trails and not get lost. As the person who is most likely to get lost, this new protocol might actually be bad for me!

Go try this hike! We have. never gone down the beach on the other side of the freeway yet. On our next attempt definitely plan to do that.

Another hike for the long weekend

Saturday was 2 back to back yoga classes and a 9 mile hike. Sunday was just one yoga class followed by a 6 mile hike. We are slowing things down.. by Tuesday physical activity will be restricted to a yoga class if we are lucky and some walking up and down office buildings..

This time we went to Quicksilver with a different group, thanks to the little one.

We have hiked this park before but this time there was a lot of water in the creek. The colors were vibrant after the rains but the trail was a little bit tricky with slush covering most of it.

We got to see a lot of turkey vultures and red tail hawks as well as a solitary deer.

Enjoyed the hike..

A few pictures..

A short video highlight reel..

We are fortunate to have these lovely places to hike in within a 30 minute driving distance!