Introduction:
Where? :
The large park, part of the East Bay park District, is located 40min drive
from the valley when road are open, take why 680 east and turn left on Calaveras
Rd. exit.
Google Map Link
What? :
Large park that start at the Alameda Creek lower section and climb up the east
hills and mountains. The hills are mainly open grassland with large Oak trees.
When? :
The best time to visit this park is nice winter day or spring where all is
green, at summer all is yellow and hot.
Due
note 1: Because this park hills are with a lot of open space grassland it is
not recommended to come at a rainy windy day where you do not have a lot of places
to protected from the rain.
Due
Note 2: Most of the park open space is being use as ranch land for cattle grazing
so when encounters cows keep on going creating a safe distance between you and
the cows.
My thoughts:
I really like this park at spring when it is full of flowers and all
is green. Many are hiking only in the main valley and along the river all the
way to the little Yosemite section (that is nice) but my favorite part of the
park is going up to the hills and enjoy the surrounding hills view.
The
visit:
When you
are getting to the park you can visit the small visitor center on your left,
park nearby or go and park down the road.
The Alameda
Creek with its running water, large trees and vegetation mark the south side of
the park and the rest of the landscape is mainly open grassland hills and
creeks with oak trees.
You have
many hiking options to choose from based on your preferred trip length or
difficult level. Most of the park trails are based on wide, well maintained
dirt roads that enable a lot of hike options. Most of the trails cross the open
landscape without any shade so during summertime it can be hot (not to mention
all is dray and yellow), during windy and rainy winter day you will not find
many places to be protected from the rain.
Below is
a list of recommended trails, starting from short to longer one, for the longer
loop trails you can also do them at the opposite direction.
Very
short Shady Glen trail (Blue in the map):
Take Camp Ohlone Road along the Alameda Creek, you can take the single track near the water that has some shad or the exposed dirt road on the slope of the hill.
If you are coming with a hiking stroller the dirt road will be good.
Go all the way to the section of Little Yosemite boulders (small waterfalls).
Nice
place to rest and enjoy the narrow river section, but do not expect Yosemite …
From Little Yosemite you have several options:
A: Go
back to your car on the same trail
B: Take
the Cerro Este trail going up - Recommended hike
C: Keep
on going on Camp Ohlone Road till the end (take the Backpack trail up)
If you took option B you will reach after 0.2 mile the Canyon View narrow trail;
You can turn left (west) and head back to the visitor center using this nice trail (dotted blue line in the map above).
Overall this will be a 3.3 mil hike.
Longer and the recommended option is to keep going up on Cerro Este Road (Orange on the above map).
You can take the McCorkle trail left & down or keep going all the way up to the junction with Cave Rocks Road ridge top.
For that option make sure you keep left and up when
reaching the second junction, near the round small pound.
From
the high viewpoint of Cave Rock Road and Cerro Este junction point there is excellent
view on all surrounding hills and valleys.
From
this point all is downhill; Take the Cave Rocks road going down all the way to
the High Valley Camo old and large farmhouse (excellent resting point) or you
can take the Indian Joe Creek trail directly to the visitor center.
If you
decide to go through the farmhouse valley (orange trail in the map above) you will pass a small lake on your
right. Usually there are many water-turtles doing sunbath over small floating
trees (try not to scare them if you are approaching the pound).
From
the farmhouse junction you have 2 options:
A: Go back to visitor center (Orange hike):
The Hayfield Trail is going down sharply and will reach
Alameda Creek after 1.2 mils, if you do not want to wet your feet just turn
right to the bridge crossing the river.
B: Additional hike to a viewing point (Purple hike):
Keep going west on High Valley Rd. for ~300m and at the huge dead tree bark turn left into Flag Hill Rd., Climb the ridge and get all the way to the Flag Hill viewing point.
This is a nice place viewing the creek below.
From
there take the Flag Hill trail all the way to the creek, turn left and crossing the river using the bridge.
This park
is connected to Mission Peak Regional Preserve on the west and Ohlone Wilderness
Regional Preserve at the west by Ohlone Wilderness trail long hiking trail.
Comments
Post a Comment