Peninsula Trails. Jean Rusmore
will delight in the well-mounted specimens of a surprising variety of plants. Photographs trace San Pedro Valley’s long history.
Shortly beyond the beginning of the Old Trout Farm Loop Trail, look to your right for the tanks that are the remnants of John Gay’s trout farm, washed away in the floods of 1962. Under overhanging trees draped with German ivy and tangles of berry brambles that almost obscure the view of the creek, the trail continues for about ⅓ mile. Turn back when you will, or bear right at a park gate to continue the loop through a narrow canyon that once was a domestic garden. Stone steps lead to a sturdy bridge that crosses intermittent Brooks Creek where horsetails, ferns, willows, and currants flourish. After the bridge the trail continues uphill beside new redwood trees emerging through the dense eucalyptus forest.
You can follow this trail along the park’s western hillside back to the picnic grounds, or bear sharp left at the first intersection to climb to the northwestern heights of the park on the Brooks Creek Trail.
NORTH RIDGE LOOP
This trip climbs a west-facing slope on the Valley View Trail and then descends to join Weiler Ranch Road farther up the valley.
Distance: 2.2-mile loop
Time: 1 hour
Elevation Change: 600’ gain
Cross the creek on a bridge from the main parking lot to the left of the visitor center. Continue past the group picnic area under venerable walnut trees. Turn right on Weiler Ranch Road, then almost immediately veer left on the Valley View Trail, which takes off uphill.
If you want a short level walk, continue on the road to one of the two picnic tables between the beginning and the end of the Valley View Trail. But for a brisk walk up the ridge before lunch, you can take the Valley View Trail and be back in less than an hour. In spring the meadow-side tables look out over a field of poppies, lupines, buttercups, and wild mustard.
The Valley View Trail climbs a sunny slope, then enters a eucalyptus grove and emerges in fragrant chaparral. From here you can look south to the heights of Montara Mountain. In April blue coast iris blooms in the grasslands. From the ridgetop easy switchbacks take you down to Weiler Ranch Road, on which you can return to the park office. For a longer walk you can follow this easy road to the upper end of the valley, where hills rise steeply to Sweeney Ridge a thousand feet above.
Point Reyes, Mt. Tamalpais, and the Pacific Coast from the Montara Mountain Trail
Or you can walk 0.4 mile east and climb the south ridge on the Hazelnut Ridge Trail for a longer loop; see the following trip.
An extension of the Valley View Trail is proposed to meet the Sweeney Ridge Trail in the GGNRA.
THE HAZELNUT RIDGE LOOP
After a climb up the high ridge on the Hazelnut Trail, return on a west-facing slope to the visitor center.
Distance: 4.3-mile loop
Time: 3 hours
Elevation Change: 800’ gain
On the Weiler Ranch Road, walk about 0.75 mile up the valley and cross the Middle Fork of San Pedro Creek on a bridge installed to facilitate steelhead navigation to spawning grounds on the upper reaches of this creek. Just after the bridge, the Hazelnut Trail turns off on your right. On this trail you make a wide swing west, then continue on switchbacks up the canyon wall. After a wide traverse east, you zigzag up a ridge, gaining 400 feet in elevation.
At the high point of the trail you come to a gentler grade in tall chaparral of coffeeberry, Montara manzanita, wild lilac, and scrub oak. You soon reach a high saddle between San Pedro Creek’s middle and south forks. A huge eucalyptus grove dominates the northwest end of the flat just before you begin the steep pitch downhill.
As the trail turns down in earnest, it doubles back and forth through a thicket of hazelnut, the shrub that gives the trail its name. You are soon at the foot of the hillside and crossing a sloping, flower-filled little meadow behind the visitor center, the end of the trip.
MONTARA MOUNTAIN TRAIL
Climb the park’s western ridge for dramatic ocean views.
Distance: 5 miles round trip
Time: 3 hours
Elevation Change: 1000’ gain
After the 1987 purchase of a strategic parcel of land between the adjoining McNee Ranch State Park and San Pedro Valley Park, San Mateo County built this trail. It crosses the steep southwestern slopes of the park and joins McNee Ranch State Park high on the saddle between San Pedro Mountain and Montara’s peaks.
Leaving from just west of the visitor center, this trail for hikers only zigzags uphill, at first traversing a eucalyptus grove on east-facing slopes. It then goes through coastal scrub—huckleberry, manzanita, ceanothus, chinquapin, silk-tassel bush, and the ubiquitous poison oak. From notches in the hills one has glimpses of the ocean; higher up are splendid views of the coastline from Point Reyes to Half Moon Bay, and east to Sweeney Ridge and Mt. Diablo. In spring, irises bloom beside the trail and waterfalls drop into steep-sided canyons. At the junction with the trail from McNee Ranch, a left turn onto this wide service road, open to bicyclists also, leads to the North Peak of Montara Mountain, about 2.4 miles farther uphill. A right turn leads downhill through the state park to its gate at Highway 1.
BROOKS CREEK/MONTARA MOUNTAIN TRAILS LOOP
Find the falls on the way to the ridge between two deep canyons.
Distance: 4.2-mile loop
Time: 2½ hours
Elevation Change: 460’ gain
Begin this trip on the hikers-only trail beside the restrooms at the picnic area west of the visitor center. Mount a few steps and turn left (west) on the other leg of the Old Trout Farm Trail, which makes a gentle climb along the base of the south-facing hillside. At each junction thereafter, bear right on the Brooks Creek Trail. You rise slowly up the hillside under tall pines, occasional redwoods, and many eucalyptus. When you leave the forest and get out into the chaparral, the views across the canyon open up and you see the Hazelnut Trail’s route on the opposite hill.
With sounds of water tumbling down the canyon and the scent of flowering shrubs and wildflowers in the air, you find a bench at the much-heralded waterfall viewing area. If you want to see the waterfall, come right after a winter storm clears and you will see and hear the triple falls dropping down the sheer mountainside. The great force of the water creates its own mist, which sometimes shrouds the canyon wall. At other times, the stream is not full enough to put on a big display. However, the hike to the bench is pleasant with dramatic vegetation changes as you climb.
To complete the loop trail, keep climbing on the Brooks Creek Trail in and out of ravines on the southeast-facing ridge. Beautiful specimens of gray-green silk tassel trees and veritable forests of mahogany-trunked manzanita crowd the trailside and several benches offer places to rest. You head into a deep ravine and around some switchbacks, and pass little streams gurgling down the mountain. You soon reach the ridgetop