Big Basin Redwoods State Park
Today, Ozreiousn, her friend Adam, and I wandered into the Santa Cruz Mountains to hike an epic set of trails in a loop more than ten miles long. We started out fairly early, coffeed up, and headed up into the mountains. Our destination: Big Basin Redwoods State Park, the oldest state park in California, full of old growth redwoods that were large trees when Columbus found land in the West Indies. After winding through more than eight miles of an extremely windy highway 236, which becomes one lane for about seven of those miles, we arrived at the beautiful park headquarters on the highway, explored the visitor’s center, and used the bathroom before a long and grueling journey.
The trail is marked “strenuous” for a reason. It is certainly not for the faint-legged. Huge climbs show off beautiful views inside the forest, which give way to ledged trails cut out of the hillside and through fallen trees. After a few miles, we hooked to the right and started a hard climb northward. Before long, we found the first of three waterfalls. Climbing past the falls was tricky, steep, but well worth the effort. After a quick snack, we connected with Sunset Trail for the journey back. My new GPS unit, the Garmin Vista HCX seemed to be unable to track our progress on the trip computer, the speed box on the compass panel showed us at 0.0 mph quite often, and the map seemed to only grab us every 80 – 100 feet. When we returned exhausted to the park headquarters, the trip computer showed us at 6.25 miles (which is 4.15 short). On saving the route, the GPS calculated the route distance correctly.
The last half of the hike over Sunset Trail was less scenic, but it might have been because we were getting tired of climbing. The first trail we had taken had allowed us to drop in elevation by more than 500 feet. We braved the uphill climbs and allowed for frequent catch-our-breath breaks. That was certainly a strenuous hike, but well worth the effort.
My results: 10.40 miles in 5:24:35; HR: 114 avg, 158 max; 2515 cal (55% fat) => 1383.25 cal fat.
We certainly earned our dinner at Tandoori Cafe this evening. Whew.
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