Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve

  
Length: 5.7 mile hike; 7.7 bike
Elevation: 1,000 feet
Download the pdf map.

A good hike for a hot summer day. Though the route is hilly, it is mostly shaded and sometimes shrouded in fog. The scenic wheelchair-accessible trail is also great for a family outing in the redwoods.

Description:

Excerpt from the Bay Area Ridge Trail: The Official Guide for Hikers, Mountain Bikers, and Equestrians. Courtesy of Jean Rusmore and Wilderness Press:

"Wheelchair users start from the head of the Redwood Trail and follow the well-graded path northwest through a beautiful redwood grove, where shade-loving wildflowers and shiny-leaved huckleberry shrubs thrive at trailside. Your path crosses the Purisima Creek Trail and continues 0.2 mile to a flat where a picnic table affords a place to have a snack and enjoy the forest view.

Hikers, equestrians, and bicyclists descend into a deep canyon on the Purisima Creek Trail under tall, second-growth redwoods and tanoaks. The trees in this 2511-acre preserve were heavily logged in the late 19th century. The forest scene here was very different from what you see now--loggers felled redwoods by hand, several streamside mills cut the wood into shingles, and oxen teams pulled wagons loaded with logs up the steep mountainside.

Logging continued sporadically into the 20th century, until MROSD completed its purchase of this land in 1984. Today, historic logging roads, linked by newly built footpaths, make fine trails. The wide openings in the forest were once used as landings for the logs and are now springtime gardens of blue ceanothus, scarlet columbine, and the yellow blossoms of invasive Scotch broom. In fall, the brilliant yellow of big-leaf maples accents the forest greens.

After 1.8 miles of steady downhill on the Purisima Creek Trail, and 1000 feet elevation loss, hikers split ways from bicyclists and equestrians.

Equestrians and bicyclists continue downhill to the western terminus of the Purisima Creek Trail, losing 1630 feet in elevation. Then turn right, uphill, on the Harkins Ridge Trail.

Hikers turn right on the 2.5-mile, hikers-only Soda Gulch Trail, its secluded entrance marked by a Bay Area Ridge Trail sign on the right side of a hairpin turn. The trail follows the forested east side of No Name Gulch, where delicate springtime flowers abound. You cross a bridge over a tributary, and another over the main creek, and switch to the drier, south-facing slope. Tanoaks, cream bush, and even an evergreen oak or two flourish in this sunny zone.

You reach Soda Gulch and return to deep forest, where circles of second-growth trees surround redwood stumps 5 to 6 feet in diameter. One of the largest trees on the steep-sided trail is a towering, double-trunked redwood, whose scarred bark may indicate it was used to anchor cables for hauling logs uphill.

A handsome wooden bridge crosses the upper reaches of Soda Gulch Creek, full in spring, though sometimes dry by fall. Now more than halfway along the Soda Gulch Trail, you again leave the moist redwood forest and begin to ascend open chaparral slopes. At a bend in the trail, you will find welcome shade under a lone, wide-spreading tanoak tree.

Turn right (east) when you reach the Harkins Ridge Trail junction and meet the equestrian/bicyclist route, 1.4 miles from the north parking area.

Hikers, equestrians, and bicyclists climb steeply on the wide Harkins Ridge Trail, formerly known as the Harkins Fire Road. Low chaparral and a scattering of trees line the trail, which veers left and levels off to cross over the headwall of Whittemore Gulch. Look west to the ocean to see breakers crashing on the beach near Half Moon Bay. Past sizable redwoods, clusters of Douglas fir, and abundant seasonal flowers, you come to the North Ridge Trail junction.

Hikers cross the wide North Ridge Trail to a well-graded footpath that zigzags up through a fir and tanoak forest. At one of the bends in the footpath, you can see other high points of the Santa Cruz Mountains to the northwestMontara Mountain, Scarper Peak, and the long central Cahill Ridge in the San Francisco Watershed. Soon you reach the parking area at the crest of the Skyline ridge, having regained the 1,000 feet in elevation you lost in Purisima Creek Canyon.

Equestrians and bicyclists veer right (east) and follow the North Ridge Trail to the parking area. "

Regulations:
Open dawn to one-half hour after sunset. No dogs. Helmets required for bicyclists, mandatory. Mandatory 15-mile speed limit. The trail is managed by the

Directions:
South trailhead, Purisima Creek Trailhead
Take Skyline Blvd. (Hwy. 35) 6.5 miles south from Half Moon Bay Rd. (Hwy. 92) or 6.5 miles north from La Honda Rd. (Hwy. 84) to parking at Purisima Creek trailhead on west side of Skyline Blvd.

Disabled parking 0.1 mile farther south at head of Redwood Trail on west side of Skyline Blvd.

North trailhead, Purisima Creek Trailhead
Take Skyline Blvd. (Hwy. 35) 4.5 miles south from Half Moon Bay Rd. (Hwy. 92) or 8.5 miles north from La Honda Rd. (Hwy. 84) to large parking area on west side of road; equestrian trailer parking available.

Link to Managing Agency: http://www.openspace.org/