Hiking Russian Ridge, part 2
Dec. 12th, 2021 09:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerYesterday we hiked at Russian Ridge Open Space in the Santa Cruz Mountains a little bit northwest of here. As I showed in my previous blog, even the parking is scenic, let alone trail. Here are more pictures & trail notes.
I mentioned last time that one of the cool things about Russian Ridge, one of the things that brings us back to this preserve again and again, is that from the ridge trail you get alternating views of the SF Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Here's an example (above) of looking out over the Pacific from atop a knob on the Ridge Trail. Due west today the ocean is actually not shrouded in fog. To the southwest it is, though.
You might wonder how it is that if we come here "again and again" there's so little about Russian Ridge in my blog. The simple answer is I don't blog about every trip. One of the things we like about this park— other than its beauty— is that it's relatively close to home. Another is that there are hikes we can choose that aren't terribly hard. Together these make easy to say "Let's hike Russian Ridge" today without making a big production out of it.
Now you might be wondering, "Wait, how many reasons are there to go to Russian Ridge?" The answer is 5. There are Five Things I like about Russian Ridge. ...That blog is from 2017 and has pictures from a time of year when the hills are brilliant green. Then there's this blog from hiking through an Inversion Layer in 2019.
Anyway, back to today....
After hiking along the ridge for 1km we turned at a trail junction and dropped partway down the hillside. On this aptly named Hawk Trail we saw a hawk soaring over the ridge. I didn't have my good camera with telephoto lens, aka "bird shooter", just my iPhone, so no bird-in-flight pics.
We angled below the ridge for a while. At what we call the bailout point, a trail junction where there's a short trail back uphill to the entrance, we opted to continue around farther instead. That took us further south, angling back up toward the ridge top, to Borel Hill, the high point in this area.
Something we weighed in beginning this hike is how soon it would get dark. It was 2:15pm when we parked, and almost 2:30 when we hit the trailhead. Sunset would be at 4:50... which we knew meant it would be getting dark by 4:20. Yeah, these short days late in the year really suck. But today we made the short day work for us. We know the trails well enough that we weren't worried about hiking back at dusk. And hiking near dusk meant lots of great sunset pictures, like this one (above) looking west over the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.
And we did have enough time to hike about 4 miles before dark.
As we wrapped up the hiking, descending from Borel Hill to the trailhead, we were treated to one final view of the Bay. (Actually from this point you can see both the bay and the ocean at the same time if you angle your eyes outward to see in two directions at once.) In the distance we could see the towers of downtown San Francisco, almost 40 miles away.
I mentioned last time that one of the cool things about Russian Ridge, one of the things that brings us back to this preserve again and again, is that from the ridge trail you get alternating views of the SF Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Here's an example (above) of looking out over the Pacific from atop a knob on the Ridge Trail. Due west today the ocean is actually not shrouded in fog. To the southwest it is, though.
You might wonder how it is that if we come here "again and again" there's so little about Russian Ridge in my blog. The simple answer is I don't blog about every trip. One of the things we like about this park— other than its beauty— is that it's relatively close to home. Another is that there are hikes we can choose that aren't terribly hard. Together these make easy to say "Let's hike Russian Ridge" today without making a big production out of it.
Now you might be wondering, "Wait, how many reasons are there to go to Russian Ridge?" The answer is 5. There are Five Things I like about Russian Ridge. ...That blog is from 2017 and has pictures from a time of year when the hills are brilliant green. Then there's this blog from hiking through an Inversion Layer in 2019.
Anyway, back to today....
After hiking along the ridge for 1km we turned at a trail junction and dropped partway down the hillside. On this aptly named Hawk Trail we saw a hawk soaring over the ridge. I didn't have my good camera with telephoto lens, aka "bird shooter", just my iPhone, so no bird-in-flight pics.
We angled below the ridge for a while. At what we call the bailout point, a trail junction where there's a short trail back uphill to the entrance, we opted to continue around farther instead. That took us further south, angling back up toward the ridge top, to Borel Hill, the high point in this area.
Something we weighed in beginning this hike is how soon it would get dark. It was 2:15pm when we parked, and almost 2:30 when we hit the trailhead. Sunset would be at 4:50... which we knew meant it would be getting dark by 4:20. Yeah, these short days late in the year really suck. But today we made the short day work for us. We know the trails well enough that we weren't worried about hiking back at dusk. And hiking near dusk meant lots of great sunset pictures, like this one (above) looking west over the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.
And we did have enough time to hike about 4 miles before dark.
As we wrapped up the hiking, descending from Borel Hill to the trailhead, we were treated to one final view of the Bay. (Actually from this point you can see both the bay and the ocean at the same time if you angle your eyes outward to see in two directions at once.) In the distance we could see the towers of downtown San Francisco, almost 40 miles away.
