My nine day January 25 - Feb 02, 2002 backpacking trip to Henry Coe State Park
 
 

 Day 3: Shallow end of Mississippi lake

Looking back at Mississippi lake from atop its dam
(all lakes at Coe are actually reservoirs)

County line ridge looking South East towards Mustang peak

There was a sort of steep trail down from here which headed into the Oristimba wilderness (which is to the left of this photo).
 

Toward the bottom of this trail was a beautiful oak woodland with Johney Jump Ups in bloom ... everywhere, especially on the grassy ridges.

This has just the sort of trail I like: barely there.
 

Mid Oristimba River

I walked right by the 6 black tailed deer you see on the slope to the right of the biggest tree in this photo.
They just kind of looked at at me.  I don't think they had seen a person for awhile.

I encountered my first wild pig further downstream.  This scared me a bit.  He or she, I'm not sure which, was about 25' from me on the other side of the creek.  At first I wasn't sure it was a pig because only the head of him was poking out from a hole in the rock.  And it didn't move a muscle.  It was at a spot where big rocks go straight up from the water on both sides of the creek  Fortunately I had climbed up over the rocks on the opposite side of the creek.  I would see many more pigs, but none so close that I could look them in the eye.
 

Red Creek

I bushwhacked up the bottom of Red creek rather than take the long detour by road.  It was an easy hike.  I just had to cross the creek back and forth a dozen or so times.
 

Day 4: SNOW!

It got very cold as it got dark this and many more nights.  Coyotes on a ridge on the other side of the creek howled for some time as I ate my dinner and bedded down.  Then about mid-night it got very cold and I put on all of my cloths including gloves on my toes.  By now the coyotes had stopped.  I thought about them out there in that cold.

I was awoken around 1 am by what sounded like soft rain hitting the tent.  But then about 2 I heard a slight whooshing in the dead of night.  I realized snow was sliding down my tent.  Giddy, I couldn't help but get up in the cold, moonlit night and take a look out the tent to see it snowing.  I got up and shook the snow off of the tent so it wouldn't collapse and then went back to bed.  Ooo it was cold.  I was really glad to have a tent.
 

I headed upstream as soon as I could once I had eaten.
(Sure glad to have waterproof warm gloves and a warm hat.  It really helped when shaking the snow off of the tent.)

Just when you think there is no more road, there is a better road.  Red Creek, a strange place.

Finally the Red creek road headed up a ridge to the left, and I had to poke around and find an old trail up the mountain on the other side.  It was marked as a "jeep" road, but it was really a "Caterpillar" road.  It was really steep.  I rose about 1000 feet in almost no time.  At the top I ate lunch and dried out my gear in the brief bit of sun.  Then I headed down this ridge ... only to later have to come back up it, when I realized that the trail I needed went down a different ridge from the top.  Till now most of the trails had been marked or clearly obvious.

Looking South west

Looking east

View from the trail I finally took off the ridge.

It was really just an old fire break plowed by a caterpillar and now overgrown or eroded in many places.  I was looking for the Pinto Creek trail fork, but I missed it.  The peak in the photo is Robinson mountain.
 

Day 5: View from top of Rooster ridge: Oristimba creek

My final ascent of Rooster Ridge turned out to be a surprise:  it was 20' straight up this rock.

Needless to say, I took a great deal of time checking each hand and toe hold,
knowing that a slip could easily be fatal.  But it had been a steep trail to get near this rock, and what the heck, my gear still needed a little more drying time in the sun.  (With the cold nights, I was pretty careful to get my stuff dry each day.  The worst thing is to be wet and cold.)
 

Looking back at rooster ridge.

It doesn't look so high or steep from here.  I bushwhacked my way down the face.  It's easy walking country.  Very little poison oak.  Mostly coyote brush or grassland.

It was hot this day.  I ended up in shorts on this road.
 

Day 6: There was a spectacular view of many peaks South from Mustang peak.

.. But unfortunately, this photo doesn't capture it very well.
You could see a huge mountain range south of Pacheco Peak.

I had packed water up this hill the night before so I could camp on the ridge.  It was blowing hard when I set up but the wind finally stopped when the sun set.  A coyote howled for awhile just 50 yards away.  Perhaps he had been following me.  Whatever the case, I wasn't his dinner.

When I got up about mid-night to pee, it was just the stars, the moon and me.  Although I could see far off in almost every direction, I saw no human lights, that is except for an occasional airplane.  It was eerie to look so far off into the distance at night from such a high ridge and not see any house lights.  It was then that I realized that this coyote was pretty lucky.
 

Day 7: Kingbird Pond

I camped on the dam.  The only flat sunny place that had dry ground.

If I had heard coyotes howl before, they weren't much until I heard them here this night.  There was one which screamed more than howled, like a person in terrifying pain being stabbed by a knife.  It was the most eerie, unsettling sound I have ever heard.  At first I wasn't even sure it was a coyote.  It sounded like a prankster trying to scare me to death.  It sure got my attention.  But I knew that they wouldn't bother me so I just finished dinner and turned in as usual.

But, all was not to be so quiet.  Earlier I had seen a pig about 100 yards from my tent over a ridge while getting water.  Later that night I was awoken by a rubbing noise on the tent.  I let out a holler for all I was worth.  But once I was finished yelling I didn't hear anything again, except for passing planes, of which there were far too many noisy ones.  As advised, I had been stowing my food in the tent and frankly at some point expected some sort of assault on it from a mouse or some other critter.

But I'm still not sure if I just dreamed this noise or if it was real.  In any event I don't know if it was the pig or something else.  In the morning, the ground was too hard to look for tracks so I just packed up very early and headed out.  I found it was best to be on the trail early in the day because I needed to stop by 4 and be in bed by 6.
 
 

Day 8: Center Flats Road (very little of it was flat like this!)

A little earlier in the day I spooked a bobcat and then he spooked the quail he was hunting.  I hoped that my presence hadn't caused him to go hungry that day.
 

Coit Lake

This was a welcome sight after a long walk on day 8.  It had been my longest day yet, and by the time I got here it was already starting to get cold and the ground was wet.  There was even snow I walked through on the way down from tower hill.  I camped over on the other side of the lake, and just barely made it there as the sun set.

There were three groups of coyotes at this lake, and they encircled me, howling back and forth to each other.  One group sounded like a small family with lots of little yaps.  Listening to all of them nearly brought me to tears.  It was going to be another cold night and I had seen very little move that could be considered food for them.  I wondered how they survived in the long frozen nights.

As I hiked out of this lake at daybreak (I had gotten up before dawn), one final round of howls bid me farewell.  This was the first time I had heard the coyotes howl in the day.  I turned and stopped.  I almost howled back, but decided not to push my luck.

Later that day I saw two coyotes together on a nearby ridge.  I did howl at them a little just to see what they would do.  One of them turned to me and took a step forward.  That is the last time I'll howl at a coyote.

I also had the good fortune to watch a bobcat for nearly 15 minutes near Mahoney Pond.  He didn't see me till the end.  Amazing how much they behave like a house cat.

Later that day I saw some human hikers!  I didn't howl at them either. :-)
 
 

- Litter in the wilderness -
Balloons, Balloons and more Balloons!

Please be careful if you buy helium balloons.  They just get loose, fly off and end up in some wilderness.  I found the remains of 10 along my trip.  The tall white box is a payload to a weather balloon.  It has a circuit board, battery, and an envelope in which to return it to the US Government, postpaid.  I sent them a nasty note asking them to find a better way to predict weather than to litter the wilderness.  Don't we have satellites for this?  Perhaps I'll find one of them someday.