Zen And The Art Of Hiking (Green Gulch 4/27)

Wet.  Again.
The last (hopefully) of this Winter’s storms was blowing through the Bay Area as we drove to the trailhead at Muir Beach for this week’s hike around and above Green Gulch Farm.  But despite the foreboding weather forecast most of us gathered for our weekly pre-hike confab in the mud of the parking lot.

We began by crossing a bridge over Redwood Creek and turning east away from the beach and toward the entry to Green Gulch.  On the way to the farm we passed horses grazing in the drizzly rain and Vetch and Thimbleberry growing along the Middle Green Gulch Trail.

Although Pirates Cove sounded like an interesting destination, we headed east rather than south along the coast and reached the farm about a half hour after starting out.  A few veggies were poking their heads out of the tilled soil, but the both the weather and the land denied the arrival of Spring.

A tractor dumped dirt into a big pile while a few workers stood about, but most of the farm equipment stood idle.  A small shrine built on the side of a wooden building extorted all who passed to “Be Fully Engaged Helping Others….And Be Free From Self-Clinging.”

Within forty-five minutes of setting out the rain had ceased and we had begun the long, steep climb up to Coyote Ridge.  Cow Parsnip, Ceanothus, Lupine, and Franciscan Paintbrush lined this section of our route.  Green Gulch Farm lay farm below shrouded in the white misty clouds driven skyward by strong gusts of wind.

When we reached the crest we spotted a gopher looking hypothermic just inches from the safety of his burrow.  We headed west and then turned northwest at the junction with the Coastal Fire Road.  By now the wind was blowing hard at times and the low ceiling made it difficult to see anything of interest, so we continued downhill for another half-hour until we found a fairly flat spot at a saddle on the hill and plopped down for a breezy lunch break.

Fog hung low along the rocky shore below us, but the sun came out for a bit during the last leg back to Muir Beach.  But the rain wasn’t done and on the drive back home cloudbursts reminded us Winter isn’t yet done with the Meanderers in Marin.

(Theresa Fisher did not join us for this walk so we don’t have the usual statistics on distance covered and elevation gained or lost.  But the GGNRA maps suggest that we hiked about 4.0 miles and reached a height of 900 feet above sea level on Coyote Ridge.  Click here to view photos of the hike taken by Walt Drucker and Dick Jordan).