California Trailrunnery and Outdoorsy News Roundup

I'm very fortunate to have home-bases for the moment in both San Francisco and San Diego, so dear reader, you'll be seeing links from up and down the coast of the whole great state of California.


French broom, a severe invasive from the Mediterranean. I hope they eat it all. The stuff is like California's own kudzu. If you see it in a park, call it in. If you see it in your yard, pull it out.


1) With the warm dry winter, French broom is already in full bloom along Route 13 in the East Bay area - but completely absent from Redwood Preserve, as far as I can tell, due to a concerted effort by volunteers over the past few years. Good job! A few years it looked like it had completely taken over.

2) Oil platforms off Venture and Santa Barbara Coast to be re-opened, if this already-passed House bill becomes law.

3) A great resource for San Diego trail runners: Scott Capistrant's systematic trail running reviews.


From Scott's Los Penasquitos post. It looks hot. You can smell the dust and sage in this picture.


4) There are albino redwoods in several places around the state, like the one e Mark at Tales from the Trails found below. Of course it's not true albinism in the sense of vertebrates, but rather a lack of chloroplasts, which in turn means they can't photosynthesize; but since redwoods often share root systems, they can get away with it (not surprising in retrospect that redwoods do this but still cool. Clonally reproducing organisms like redwoods often share resources since it's identical genes cooperating with themselves.) I'm going to be heading down to Henry Cowell State Park tomorrow to check some out and go for a nice Santa Cruz Mountains run.


From Mark's Tales from the Trails

5) If you're in the East Bay and want a fun Wednesday night trail running group, the WEENIES is a good one. (Wednesday Evenings East Neighborhoods International Exercise Society.) Last week we were up on the deer and fire trails in Tilden and above Strawberry Canyon, and in the dark we startled a deer that almost bulldozed us as it was running.

6) For hashers: thinly concealed heresy on the San Francisco Hash House Harriers website! And needless to say, right before I moved up here I just started really enjoying the North County Hash in San Diego (they did an Elfin Forest run a while back that was fantastic) but the East Bay ruffians are a good time too.

7) Finally - I'm going to post something I'm doing on the awesome site nobodyhikesinla. Hopefully it will make it even more helpful for people who like SoCal trails!



The Bay Ridge Trail in EBMUD land south of Tilden Park, Oakland. David Sanger Photography.

Happy New Year!

Point Reyes

Happy New Year to all! To those of you I got to see, it was great. To those of you I haven't seen enough of in the last few months, congratulations on getting away from me, but it won't last. You've been warned.

A fun trip to San Francisco and back involved the usual silliness at such visits of running in Redwood Preserve in Oakland (i.e. French Trail), Muir Woods, the Marin Headlands, Purisima Creek Redwoods and Point Reyes - including, at the latter, more oysters than can really be healthy. I've also never seen that many elk hanging out at the McClure Beach area. I also got out to Mt. Diablo where I rediscovered the Eagle Peak route from Mitchell Canyon that I'd "lost" years ago - always good to recover a memorable route that you couldn't place on a map anymore. (But if that's happening to you it's a sign you've been out on too many trails.) On the way up I took this little detour through Angeles NF to see if there were any trails worth exploring on Angeles Crest Highway/Angeles Forest Highway/Big Tujunga Canyon Road. (Route below - I'm biased against desert-like terrain, so for me the answer is no, although if I'm missing anything feel free to comment.)


View Larger Map

Names will be disguised or left incomplete to protect the guilty: thanks to Greg and Will for letting me crash with them (again!) and to Greg and Rene for inviting us to a fun little New Years party in San Francisco. No thanks to professor MG for letting me stay in his squalid hovel in Santa Barbara. However this last visit reminded me again of the many trails in the Santa Ynez right there above Santa Barbara; Cold Spring Trail and Montecito Peak is one of them.

I Got Tom Stienstra's Back

For what it's worth, I love Tom Stienstra's columns, and he's been a great source of outdoors info as well as an outstanding advocate for hunters, fisherman, and hikers everywhere. He was recently arrested up in Northern California for growing marijuana. Clearly he's a productive member of the community, and he's far from the only person doing this in NorCal; the whole thing makes these laws seem even sillier. What a waste of law enforcement attention and taxpayer money.