Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Saturday morning we got up early to visit Sierra Vista Open Space in the mountains east of San Jose. Good news: We had a great hike overlooking the city. Bad news: It was kind of short. We were back at the car by 9:15. What to do? How about a two-fer! We refilled our water bottles at the car and went hiking on a trail on the other side of the road.



This is the Aquila Trail. At times in the past we've hiked it it's been a riot of a wildflowers. Today, not so much. In fact pretty much not at all. Wildflowers bloom when there's good rain followed by a few weeks of warm weather. This season we've had tons of rain— so the first key ingredient is there— but not yet the warm weather. Maybe in another few weeks these hillsides will look totally different.



The Aquila Trail is a short loop, about 1.2 miles around. Together with our hiking on the Kestrel Trail earlier we're hiking maybe 3 miles total. On the one hand that's not much. On the other hand it's pretty good for getting a hike in before errands and lunch.



Though there aren't wildflowers out today we enjoy the Aquila Trail for its remote feel. With vistas like this we can imagine we're well into the wilderness... even thought Silicon Valley with its millions of people is just over our shoulder.



On today's trek we noticed something we've overlooked before: fossils! Some of the rocks up here bear the imprint of what looks like organisms from an ancient sea floor.

Like I said, the hikes were both short. We were back at the car by 10am. The parking lot was already full, and rangers were aggressively turning people away. I'm glad we arrived at 8:15. We'll have to come early again when we return for wildflower season!

Last Sunday we got out for a hike at Rancho Cañada del Oro Open Space south of San Jose. Yes, that was after a fun hike with friends at Devil's Slide on Saturday. And it was before meeting another set of friends for lunch on Sunday. Yes, this weekend the days were just packed!

We've hiked at Rancho Cañada at least 4 times in the past couple years, though none recently enough that they're on my blog at Dreamwidth. Over at LiveJournal I have a few writeups, such as hiking the High Peaks Loop in June 2020 and the Mayfair Ranch Ridge in April 2020 and in March 2020. This weekend we returned to the Mayfair Ranch Ridge loop. Yes, we've hiked it at least twice before, but it's such a pleasant trail it's worth repeating.



This time around I'm going to try something different with my hiking blog. I'll start with a map I've annotated (see above) and use that to frame my trail notes and pictures.

1) The park was busy when we arrived at 10:15 on Sunday morning. We had to park in the overflow lot. That added at least half a mile to our trek, stretching it out to 5.0 miles or a bit more.

2) Once the footpath leaves the road it's up, up, up to start. You can see that from the switchbacks in the map. From the trail it looks like this:



This stretch of trail gets a lot of sun and offers little shade. Even though it's early February we had mid-60s weather... and under the sun on the hillside it felt like low 70s. I zipped on the legs on my convertible pants and chuckled about the sweater I'd stuffed in my daypack.

3) After a steep but short bit of climbing on exposed hillside the trail rounds a bend to the other side of the hill. Here it's mercifully shady, which makes the trail seem so much easier. As I mentally composed this blog I thought I would add, "And it's less steep here, too," but I realized that wasn't true. The shady area still climbs plenty. It just feels easier because of the shade.

4) After about 1/2 mile of climbing the trail breaks out atop the ridge. This is where it really gets good.



Atop the ridge views start to open up in all directions.



We can see the ridge ahead of us (yes, more climbing!) and the mountains beyond it. To the left (not pictured) is the valley below, with the parking lots nestled in it; to the right, an even higher ridge (the Bald Peaks marked on the map).

5) This stretch is the best part of the trail. It's the part that keeps us coming back. As we climb higher on the ridge— no, the climbing's not done yet!— views open up in all directions. Including behind us.



The view behind us is kind of the nicest. We have to remind ourselves to stop enough and look back. The continued ascent helps a bit with that; we stop every few minutes for a quick breather. Though this trek we did better on the uphill, needing fewer rests, than we expected. Maybe we're getting back into condition with all the hiking we've been doing the past 7-8 weeks. ...Yes, that's on purpose!

6) Just where it looks like there's one more steep uphill hump to reach the top of the ridge, the trail turns right and contours around the side. On the flank of the mountain there's a nice little rest stop with a picnic table. We took off our packs and idled there for a bit, enjoying the views. Often we think of this as the end of the trail... even though it's only about halfway around the loop. That's because the ridge top feels like the scenic part, and the return branch of the loop through Longwall Canyon just feels 2.5 miles of walking to get home. The thing is, though, it's not nothing. This trip we stopped numerous times to take pictures of wildflowers growing alongside the trail. This blog's already gotten big (5 pictures) so I'll put those in a Part 2 followup.