Hiking the Frog Lake Loop at Henry Coe
May. 28th, 2024 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerHenry Coe State Park. It's a place we known about for a long time. Strangely, we haven't been there in a long time. I believe we haven't been since the early 00s! I proposed it was time to fix that this weekend, so we went there on Day 3 of our not-flying-anywhere Memorial Day weekend. Yes, we got out for hiking all 3 days!
Just the drive up to Henry Coe was impressive. The park isn't terribly far away; it's in the mountains above the town of Morgan Hill, which is 33 miles away. Though from the town it's a long drive up into the mountains, another 10 miles or so. And the route is up, up up. The entrance to the park is above 2,500' elevation. I felt like we'd driven to the roof of the Bay Area. Indeed, we could see down across the valley and across to the coastal mountains from numerous viewpoints on the road and once in the park.
Oh, but once we parked at the visitors center and shouldered our packs, it was up-up-up some more on the Monument Trail. This route took us between a pair of grassy summits at just over 3,000' elevation.
The summits were nice but also... kind of dull. The views were not as special as they seem in so many other Bay Area parks. And that reminded me of part of the reason why it's been 20+ years since we've hiked in Henry Coe: I found it kind of boring. It's like a park that's just... there. Sure, there are lots of deep wilderness trails you can use to get deep into the rugged Gabilan mountain range while still being surprisingly close to the hum of Silicon Valley, but at the same time the trails are tough they are also kind of boring. And while there's still a bit of green visible in these photos, much of the year the landscape out here is unrelieved brown.
Once past the grassy summits the Monument trail rejoined a wide fire road and wound down the far side of the ridge toward Frog Lake (photo above). Frog Lake was interesting because of how noisy it was— from all the frogs! I'd literally never heard frogs making that much noise.
After spending a few minutes at the lake we hiked around a different trail back to the visitors center, making ourselves a loop of 4.5 to 5 miles on the day. It was on this loop that the dullness problem with Henry Coe came back to me. The trail was nice, but after about 1/2 mile of the nearly 3 mile return leg I was done and ready to call it a day. It was just too much of seeing the same, not particularly interesting landscape. As we got back to the car after 3.5 hours of hiking, Hawk and I agreed maybe it'll be another 20 years before we come back.
Just the drive up to Henry Coe was impressive. The park isn't terribly far away; it's in the mountains above the town of Morgan Hill, which is 33 miles away. Though from the town it's a long drive up into the mountains, another 10 miles or so. And the route is up, up up. The entrance to the park is above 2,500' elevation. I felt like we'd driven to the roof of the Bay Area. Indeed, we could see down across the valley and across to the coastal mountains from numerous viewpoints on the road and once in the park.
Oh, but once we parked at the visitors center and shouldered our packs, it was up-up-up some more on the Monument Trail. This route took us between a pair of grassy summits at just over 3,000' elevation.
The summits were nice but also... kind of dull. The views were not as special as they seem in so many other Bay Area parks. And that reminded me of part of the reason why it's been 20+ years since we've hiked in Henry Coe: I found it kind of boring. It's like a park that's just... there. Sure, there are lots of deep wilderness trails you can use to get deep into the rugged Gabilan mountain range while still being surprisingly close to the hum of Silicon Valley, but at the same time the trails are tough they are also kind of boring. And while there's still a bit of green visible in these photos, much of the year the landscape out here is unrelieved brown.
Once past the grassy summits the Monument trail rejoined a wide fire road and wound down the far side of the ridge toward Frog Lake (photo above). Frog Lake was interesting because of how noisy it was— from all the frogs! I'd literally never heard frogs making that much noise.
After spending a few minutes at the lake we hiked around a different trail back to the visitors center, making ourselves a loop of 4.5 to 5 miles on the day. It was on this loop that the dullness problem with Henry Coe came back to me. The trail was nice, but after about 1/2 mile of the nearly 3 mile return leg I was done and ready to call it a day. It was just too much of seeing the same, not particularly interesting landscape. As we got back to the car after 3.5 hours of hiking, Hawk and I agreed maybe it'll be another 20 years before we come back.
