Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Indian Tree (February 3) Hike Preview

After spending the last two weeks hiking out at Point Reyes National Seashore, we head north and east to the Novato area to hike in the Indian Tree Open Space Preserve. Here's Wendy's description of the hike:

"This hike is great for early wildflowers and mushrooms! We could see the first Indian warriors, houndstongue, shooting stars and California saxifrage. If it has rained in the last week [alas, not likely to be the case], you may want boots for this hike! There are some stream crossings."

Directions: Take Highway 101 north. Exit at San Marin Drive and go west. San Marin becomes Sutro Avenue after if crosses Novato Boulevard. Turn right (west) onto Vineyard Road. The trail starts where the paved road turns into a dirt road. Time: 35 minutes from College of Marin. No restrooms at trailhead. (Carpoolers meet about 9:15-9:20 am at the Park & Ride lot on the east side of Highway 101 at Smith Ranch Road in the Terra Linda area north of the Marin Civic Center and downtown San Rafael).

Weather forecast: As of Wednesday, January 28th, the National Weather Service forecast for Tuesday, February 3rd, is patchy fog before 10 am, otherwise mostly sunny with a high near 62. (Click here for an updated forecast).

More on this hike: The Marin County Open Space District operates the preserve on a portion of this area (the North Marin Water District owns adjacent land) and its Web site provides a viewable/printable trail map and a list of the species of various critters we might encounter. Barry Spitz's book, Open Spaces (Marin County Open Space District, 2000) describes the area and contains a map similar to that found on the MCOSD Web site). The following hike ("E9 Deer Camp - Big Trees Trails) from the Martin's book, Hiking Marin, is probably much longer (7.2 miles) than the one we'll actually take, but shows the general area where we'll be:

Indian Tree Area Hike and Map
(Click here to view and print the hike description and map. If you have Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer you can print the document. Once you see the document on the "Scribd" Web site, click on the "Download" icon and then on the "PDF" icon to open the document on your computer).

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