Hikepost_006 - I've hiked basically the entire trail system and yet there are still surprises

This past week I pulled another 20 miler from my little map stash on AllTrails. I've had a renewed excitement for Distance lately, and have a vague goal of getting to where 20 miles is relatively comfortable. (20 miles will never be easy, but I want to get my endurance up a little so that ~15 or so miles with multiple days' worth of gear is a little less excruciating).

This loop meandering around one of the reservoirs in West Marin was described as long, monotonous, and also a good training hike for people planning to tackle the Sierras. I'd done a lot of trails on the western half of this route before - most are fire roads maintained by the water department but open to the public for hiking/cycling/horseback riding.

This means steep roads designed for vehicles rather than foot traffic, basically no infrastructure, and very few people. Don't get me wrong, this is still West Marin, it's all gorgeous. There are just plenty of similar looking trails that are closer to civilization, designed specifically as recreational trails, and have bathrooms and water. Why risk exposing your ass to poison ivy on a random day hike when you could go somewhere with luxurious vault toilets instead?

I started my hike in Lagunitas; yes, the place from the beer. Sometimes when I'm out this way think to myself "I wonder if David Lynch ever made it out to West Marin."

I got a little peek of Kent Lake before disappearing into the forest. These reservoirs are such a strange experience - there's a palpable unnaturalness to them. It was dead silent except for a loud as fuck aerator in the middle of the lake rhythmically spitting out water.

At least from an aesthetic standpoint I do enjoy the experience of walking through the woods and coming across random cranks, pipes, aqueducts, etc.

This hike obviously covered a lot of ground, and there were a few distinct sections:

The Forest

First up was 10 or so uninterrupted miles of steep-ass fire roads through the trees. The forest, of course, is beautiful, and any minute spent there is not time wasted. However, when you're doing distance in the forest it really becomes a mental endurance challenge. On an open ridgeline for example, you can visibly see your progress behind you and watch yourself getting closer to your destination. In the woods, there's no sun, no visual indicators of progress. After several miles the monotony can take a toll on your morale.

All that being said I was excited to see some mushrooms, and the first wildflowers starting to appear. I can be a brat and complain about the forest all I want but ultimately I live in a place where there are ferns that are taller than me and that's pretty cool.

Blank rolling hills aka The Shapes Zone

I describe hills as "rolling" so often that in an alt universe where my blog has not 4, but 4 million subscribers, they'd be making fun of me about it on r/wormmode. It's just that so much of California looks like this. If you were to be air-dropped from a helicopter over a randomly-selected location in the state, there's a good chance you'd land somewhere that looks exactly like this.

I love it. I get to walk around Windows XP desktop background hills whenever I want to. They look fake.

Also, some of these roads-straight-up-a-hill gave me Coe flashbacks, so people were right in describing this as a training hike. I am planning on going back to Coe this spring, to see if I can last 4-5 days in the literal wilderness or if I lose my mind. Partially as preparation for another backpacking trip I want to do, in a slightly further away and slightly more remote area.

Fuck yeah, serpentine

Serpentine (or serpentinite) is a greenish rock with a shiny texture and a soft-ish surface. It's named serpentine because it kind of looks like snakeskin; texturally it reminds me of talc or mica. Serpentine outcroppings occur at or just beneath the surface, and where it is present it changes the landscape dramatically. Most plants can't survive in this rocky, nutrient-poor soil, except for a few species. Meadows or regions of scrub form in what would otherwise be a forested area. I get way too excited about Serpentine.

I'm not sure what kind of manzanita these were; there are like 40 species just in California, and they all look very similar. Some can grow to be small tree-sized – these are only waist-high or so, with tiny leaves, compact enough to be able to grow in the serpentine soil.

Cypress forest??

I really did not expect this landscape to be this diverse. People reviewing trails on AllTrails tend to rate them on a binary scale of "trees and shade = good; exposed, anything-other-than-trees = bad." So for this loop, people praised the small section of redwoods and then complained that the whole second half of the hike was exposed, and that's pretty much it.

No one mentioned that there was a rare cypress forest! These are Sargent Cypress; they grow in a miniaturized form on the rocky serpentine soil. Some are apparently hundreds of years old!

I did not grow up around any kind of scrubland, and they still feel like alien landscapes to me (in the best way). Rocky-scramble-through-scrub has become one of my favorite kinds of hike. The shrubs are tall enough that you can't see very far, and so dense they effectively form a wall. But unlike a typical forest, you still have a view of the sky. You basically see nothing but sky.

Btw, fuck whatever size rocks you call these. Absolute worst thing to walk on. My poor knees and ankles.

I've made a huge mistake

I was so proud of my time management skills and my very fast legs getting me to my bus stop in time to catch a bus home an hour earlier than I anticipated.

I got to my first transfer and saw my next bus! It was a few minutes early even. I was so exhausted and ready to go home that I ran and hopped on without checking the sign on the front of the bus. Reader, you will believe what happened next.

I heard an announcement for a bus stop I'd never heard of and realized I was heading to Novato, a town 10 miles away. Not the end of the world; I'd just wait 40 minutes and catch the same bus back home. I included this mostly to showcase possibly the most cursed bus stop I've ever seen, and I live in the land of cursed bus stops.

A pedestrian bridge over a freeway, and then a crosswalk across a freeway on-ramp, and then a bus stop on a narrow strip of sidewalk ON the on-ramp. The fence separating the bus stop area from the SMART train chasm below had been hit by a car and one section was dangling over the edge. Always a reassuring sign.

I thought about how sitting at cold as hell bay area bus stops during the evening Wind has probably done as much to increase my cold hardiness as actually hiking and camping in the cold. I always think I packed enough layers but no amount of layers is ever enough. I sat at this cold as hell bus stop for way too long, got passed by a bus that was running late, caught the next bus, and eventually made it home.

ANYWAY,

I hope the planner or engineer who designed this is reincarnated as someone whose daily bus stop this is. I swore off transit hiking forever that night; I woke up the next day already excited for the next one. The worm in worm mode stands for brain worms.