The Other Gold Hill

People forget that the Gold Hill Fire road is more than a path up from Dominican to China Camp.

Gold Hill also has another stretch that drops down from Bayhills all the way into Peacock Gap. It's also seriously steeper in some places than the regular Gold Hill is.

If you're up for a challenge, try rolling up the path on the left. I'll leave that to the younger crowd:

Consequently, unless you're a supreme masochist, it's better to start on North San Pedro and come up over the Nike site, then to the even more hellish hill by Bayhills, and then take the elevator all the way down to P-Gap.

The Nike missile site--what it is on Nov. 19, 2009. Hard to believe this weather. A storm is coming, but not until tomorrow.

View east:

View West:

Me or Popeye, not sure which:

The view back down and north from the top of Hell Hill. It's only 200 feet long and paved, but it gets increasingly steep near the end:

There are a lot of antennas up here . . .

. . . .and apparently the top of the ridge is like an outdoor microwave oven:

Views of Gold Hill's backside, south of where the more well known section of Gold Hill comes up from Domincan:

That's the ridge you came south over:






China Camp at dusk:



Giant Trail Rat:

Pine Mountain Loop

Here are some photos from the Pine Mountain Loop above Fairfax.

I was delighted to arrive at the trail head and discover that I left my water bottle at home. With an unknown quantity of water in a Camelback along as a map carrier, I took the plunge.

Not a good place to run out of water.

This is the lead in to the really ugly hill:

The photo, looking down, does not do justice to the incline:

Hills . . . .

Hills . . . .

Hills . . .

Hills . . . .



Really should have brought more water . . .


Not a soul to see . . . .



I hope that's a dog track:



Back down the hill to Bolinas Fairfax Road:

How Not To Go Up Repack

Trying to go up Repack in Cascade Canyon is a bad idea, but my ungrateful progeny's unwillingness to provide car transport to Pine Ridge forced the issue.

I suppose I should have brought a map, so that I would have reduced the likelihood of going up Cascade Canyon . . . 

and taking a right on Blue Ridge Fire Road:

But I've gotten used to things like pushing my bike up a mile and a half of 40% grade consisting of recently washed riverbed, mud, and slippery rock.

Nice views . . . . 

Steep . . . . 

Apparently not well maintained:

Here's what it looks like after you get around the tree:

And the wrong trail:

Son of a . . . . this was like having a nightmare about trying to ride the up a down escalator with 4 foot stairs, only to wake up in Tamarancho.  Without the damned day pass . . . . 

Wagon Wheel--the mere thought of which I detest--seemed like the best way out.

An attempt to shortcut B-17  . . . . 

put me right on the fire road that's off limits to non-Boy Scouts . . . . 

eventually ran into Goldman, thence to Alchemist, and several miles off to where I had parked my car.

God damn it!

Kent Lake and Oat Hill fire Road

Talk about a change in weather . . . . sunny and warm last week to bleak and forbidding this week:

Kent Pump Road goes west from Alpine dam.

                                                                       

Bone liquefiying climb up Old Vee Road is available:

There's not a God damned thing at the end except Kent Lake, whose God forsaken shores look like something out of a text book on depression.

         

                                                                                       

                                                              

  

 

Gettin a little Silence of the Lambs vibe here:

So maybe you can ride up Old Vee to Oat Hill Road and take the unmaintained Oat Hill trail down to the road. If not, it's a wasted 750 foot climb in a one mile run.

Here's the intersection with Oat Hill Road.  Go left, and it's two miles to Pine Ridge and thence to Pine Mtn. Loop or on to Repack.

Turn right, well this doesn't look good, but there's probably some kind of trail going down from the official end.

Come to think of it, that ranger fellow did say Oat Trail was impassable:

Christ, with this weather it's like a scene from King Lear up here. "Blow, winds . . . ."

Well maybe this goes somewhere.

Or maybe not. 

Son of a bitch! A cliff with what appears to be the world's larges poison oak grove at the bottom:

Now where the hell is Hansel and Gretel's house?

Alpine Lake & Pine Ridge

It seems that it's possible to get from the southern edge of the Fairfax golf course up to the road near the Pine Ridge fire trail, which connects to the Pine Mountain loop and to trails going to the brewery in San Gernonimo.

This could be added on at the end of one version of the Lake Loop around the Sky Oaks side of the golf course.

Note Sod-donistas whacking it on would you believe it a day in October:

The beginning of the trail, which goes off Bullfrog, is not advised for cyclists:

However, no one can see you after the first couple hundred feet, and you come out on an unnamed and long unused fire trail that does not appear on maps.

It looks like a good place to practice uphill technical stuff--a fair amount of rocks, but gentle grade.

There are a few sketchy places, like this twenty feet of washed out gravel.

Eventually you come out on the road a few hundred feet from the Pine Ridge trail head.

Ugly hill to get up, but only a couple hundred feet:

Then you can go all the way out to hells have acre, north to intersect with Repack . .

. . . or south towards Kent Lake, which I explored a little: