East Bay Adventures: Redwood Regional Park

(Admin note: my report on the CLIF factory visit is getting pushed back to next week; I’m arranging for a schwag giveaway to go along with the post, and need a bit more time to coordinate a few of the details. Don’t worry, the report is coming … and it should be a lot of fun.

In the meantime, you can read about how my friends and I built up a healthy appetite before visiting our new best friends at CLIF last week.)

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The cool thing about having ultrarunners as friends is that none of them blink when you say something like, “What if we leave at 4AM so we have time to do a sweet 20-miler before our field trip?” Actually, that’s not entirely true: we haggled over the departure time for just a bit before agreeing upon a more civilized (well, sort of) 4:30AM – but there was never a doubt in any of our minds that the early wake-up call would be totally worth it.

Our drive to the East Bay Area was notable primarily for the handful of cloudbursts that drenched our car, followed by some variation of the following exchange between me and my shotgun-riding friend Brian:

Me: I thought it wasn’t supposed to rain today?

Brian: It was supposed to clear overnight, with about a 10 percent chance this morning. This is probably the last of it.

Of course, the fact that we had the same conversation 3 or 4 different times should have been our first clue that this probably wasn’t the last of the rain ... but it was still early, and our brains were probably still a little sleepy.


We parked at Sibley Volcanic Preserve, a nice little park in its own right, but perhaps better known as the connector park between two more popular trail running areas: Redwood Park to the south, and Tilden Park to the north. Many of these trails figure prominently in the Firetrails 50 race, my first 50-miler and still one of my favorite ultras around. The run would be one part reminiscence of past events, and one part anticipation of a possible return here in the fall.

And if it looks like everything here is wet and gray and gloomy … I’d say that’s a pretty accurate representation.


Our plan was to explore Redwood Park for a bit, then double back and log some miles in Tilden before the morning was over – so we quickly jumped on the Bay Area Ridge Trail in Sibley and headed south towards Redwood. The first thing that struck all three of us was how lush and green everything was all around …


… leading Brian to make a great remark when we were right in the thick of it: “Watch out for velociraptors”. Without question, there was a total Jurassic Park feel to the place.


I would have more photos of the early miles in Redwood Park, but just as we arrived there, the gray skies started opening up on us. Most of my photos came out like the one above on French Trail, with some combination of fog and raindrops on the lens. You’ll have to take my word for it: the visual effect of rain descending upon us from enormous redwoods overhead was pretty exhilarating. I just wished it weren’t quite so cold.


We took a detour to Redwood Peak, which was honestly a bit anticlimactic. Given that this spot is the high point of the ridge, and that it has the word “Peak” in its name, we were expecting to get a wide vista of the canyon below. What we got was a pile of rocks.


The good news was we now had a long gentle downhill to re-join the main trail, and by this time the rain was starting to clear …


… and we even saw some sunlight piercing through the fog and tree cover at times. Things had definitely taken a turn for the better.


We descended all the way to the bottom of the canyon, did a stream crossing (nothing exotic; it was on a plain old bridge), and made a long uphill pull to the opposite ridge, where we finally got some sweeping views …


… and the trail opened up to a nice wide fire road along the spine of the ridge as we started doubling back in the direction of Sibley Park.


However, we weren’t content to just cruise a straight shot along the ridgeline to get there, so we dropped down another side trail to the canyon floor again, and joined the very mucky but very scenic Stream Trail for a brief stretch …


… before climbing up the appropriately-named Eucalyptus Trail to return to the ridgeline.


Leaving Redwood Park, I grabbed one of the views my camera couldn’t capture on the way in; imagine this same scene with a heavy blanket of drizzle overlapped upon it, and you get an idea of what my earlier shot would have looked like.


Not knowing the area very well, I made a pretty big miscalculation beforehand; by the time we retraced our steps through Sibley Park, we had already covered almost 17 miles, and only had less than an hour before we had to leave for the CLIF tour. And instead of Sibley and Tilden Parks being immediately adjacent to each other, there’s a 3-mile connector trail between the two. In other words, there’s no way we were going to make it to Tilden …


… but that didn’t stop us from heading down the trail anyway. On the way out, I thought this was going be a brutal stretch: the first mile was a steady downhill with footing that was so muddy and slippery that it was unpredictable at best, and potentially dangerous at worst. However, the three of us very quickly resumed the easy rhythm we had enjoyed for the first three hours, and by the time we returned to this slope (the above shot was taken on the return), we had 21 miles in the bag.


When we finally reached the parking lot at Sibley, I was completely pleased with how the morning went: a long, beautiful trail run in surroundings that were unfamiliar yet completely welcoming; a brief escape from the everyday world we had left behind for a few hours in the forest; some quality time spent with good friends. It’s enough to make a guy sit for a minute and wonder at how lucky he is.


Of course, we didn’t have a whole lot of time to congratulate ourselves – because we had to hop in the car and scoot over to the CLIF shop. And that’s where this story will resume later next week.