This adventure takes place on July 16 as part of our three-day trip to Point Reyes while camping at the Olema Campground. We spent one day kayaking and one day hiking. We based our hiking plan on a map that turned out to be out of date.
Perhaps we are a bit old-fashioned, but there is something comforting about being able to spread out a printed map and get a sense of a place larger than what you can see on a smart phone or GPS unit, not to mention that you don’t need to recharge batteries. So having consulted the map in the morning, we decided on a hike that would originate at Muddy Hollow, follow the Muddy Hollow Road the the White Gate Trail, then on to the Estero Trail, looping back to our origin. This is a lovely hike that meanders through oaks and pines, crossing several streams lined with lush green ferns and alders, and out onto the more open coastal savannah.
We had a very quiet hike, seeing only a half-dozen people over the course of the day. We did see a few elk, at a distance, a few wildflowers and a few birds. When we got to the halfway point, we were looking for a trail junction that never appeared. It showed on our printed map, but not on the GAIA GPS map I was using to track our hike on my iPhone. We had to surmise that the trail on the map no longer existed, which led us to walk a few more miles than we had planned. When we returned to the car we had logged 10.6 miles. We were happy to know that we can still hike that distance over easy terrain. You can view more photos here and look at the track of our hike in more detail here.
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