BEAR MOUNTAIN #18 (SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CA)

11/19/2013

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Fred Feller writes:

"This past weekend, brother Jon and I managed to summit Bear Mountain #18 in Henry W. Coe State Park, Santa Clara County,California. We set off from my house in Berkeley at 9:30am on Saturday, considerably later than our planned 7:30am start time.  After fortifying ourselves at McDonald’s, we arrived at Coe Headquarters about noon and hit the trail at precisely 12:34.  The weather was cool but cloudless, the trails generally wide and dusty and almost always very steep. Total elevation gain and loss for the weekend was about 8000 feet.  As webmaster David Sklansky has said 'you go to the high Sierra to train for Henry Coe.'

"About 4pm Saturday, we found ourselves on Bear Mountain Road, travelling, for once, on relatively level ground.  [photo 1]  The topo map said the road would get very steep, so we decided to make camp wherever it did so.  When we reached the spot it was obvious and dramatic.  The road ahead went sharply upward, in a series of switchbacks.
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"Jon had already devised a series of strategies for the rest of the ascent.  Plan A was that we would rest for awhile, then climb to the summit and back down for dinner.  We then realized that there would be a full moon that night, so Plan B was to take a longer rest, eat dinner and then climb to the summit by moonlight.  After Jon cooked us a fine dinner of bean soup with salami, he devised Plan C, which was to sleep until 5am and then head up to see the sunrise at the summit.  This would give us 11 hours of sleep, which we assumed would be adequate.
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"The moonlight was so bright that night that it was actually hard to sleep.  Clouds and fog moved in about 4am and we got out of our sleeping bags at 7, after a good 13 hours of sack time, if not sleep time.  This necessitated Plan D, which was to go right up the Mountain and then back down for breakfast.  As we started upward, it was cold and foggy and the scenery was quite magical. [photo 2] Tall peaks rising out of the mist and clouds forming into rainbow shapes as the fog slowly lifted.[photo 3] It was just under 3 miles to the summit, which took us 2 hours, without our packs.
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"We almost missed the summit, because it was not marked on the road.  However, when we backtracked to what appeared to be the road’s highest point, we saw a small foot trail off the road going just a couple of feet higher.  There we found the appropriate Coast and Geodesic Survey and Army Corps of Engineers markers and we knew we had the right spot.[photo4] After taking  time out for thought, remembrance,  photos,  and commemorative shots of Old Jake, we headed down the mountain.[photos 5 and 6]  By this time the fog was nearly gone and Jon was out of his jacket and shirt, cruising along topless in the sun.[photos 7 and 8]
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"Back at base camp, Jon cooked up a delicious breakfast of bacon and eggs, courtesy of Joe’s camping egg carton. [photo 9]  I was carrying Joe’s pack and using his sleeping bag on my first overnight backpacking trip in more than 30 years.
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"It took us all day to make the trip back to headquarters.  We took a slightly longer route with more elevation change on the way back because I preferred the dirt roads to the somewhat more precarious creek side trails.[photo 10]  All in all, we hiked about 23 miles over the two days.  Jon did about a mile extra, because he took a side trip on the way back to retrieve a rock he had admired but left behind the day before. 

"For anyone who has bothered to read this far and would like one, I will be making 2014 calendars from my photos of the trip, with some help from Shutterfly.  I will gladly send one, for free, to anyone who lets me know who they are and where to have it mailed."

Congratulations, Fred and Jon!

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Bear Mountain #18 (Santa Clara County, CA):  Initial approaches

7/5/2013

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PicturePhoto #1
Fred Feller writes:

"On Saturday, June 29, the hottest day of the year so far in the San Francisco Bay Area, brother Jon and I left the relative cool of Mill Valley and Berkeley for an attempt at Bear Mountain #18 in the wilds of Santa Clara County, east of Silicon Valley.  (See photo #1).  Bear Mountain 18 is located in Henry W. Coe State Park which, considering its proximity to the mega-million population centers of the Bay Area, is amazingly isolated.  Relying on Google Map directions, we chose the northern approach by way of Livermore, where the temperature hit 105 degrees.

"We were using the same route as was attempted by Bill Guilford in a valiant but failed effort on June 17, while brother Guilford was en route to Southern California, after attending the memorial for Joe in Berkeley on June 15.  Guilford had used this route based on my directions and warned me that it appeared to be faulty, but I dismissed this as a result of carelessness on his part, plus the fact that he had only my phoned-in instructions to go by, with no map, no GPS device and a cell phone with no reception.  We were equipped with a detailed map, GPS and compass in addition to the Google route map, which appeared to take us straight to the summit of Bear Mountain. 

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"Nevertheless, Guilford was right.  After a couple of wrong turns and a return to Livermore for more gas, we followed the only road possible until it ended on the slopes of Mount Hamilton, at the famed Lick Observatory (photo #2).  In the Observatory gift shop, there were many maps of the universe and the solar system available but none of the surrounding territory.  However, when I told the saleslady that we were trying to find Henry W. Coe State Park, she cheerfully said: 'Oh you can’t get there from here.'  She told me that the roads on my Google map were private, belonging to ranchers who were serious about their No Trespassing signs and quite likely to take shots at anyone failing to heed their warning.

"Even if we had been tempted to ignore this advice, we confirmed, on our way back to Livermore, that every dirt road leading in the direction we wanted to go was blocked by a locked gate.  In fact, these gates usually had multiple locks on them; we counted eight on one in particular.  Why the need for so many locks I don’t know, but it made the gates look a little like those bridges on the Seine in Paris on which the railings are covered with locks supposedly put there by lovers who have then thrown the keys into the river.

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"On more closely examining my Henry Coe Park map, I noticed that 'No Park Access”'was typed in very small letters next to the illusory road we had been attempting to find.  Brother Jon thought it was rather late in the day (literally) to be making this discovery, but he agreed that, despite our failure to reach Bear Mountain, or even the park in which it is located, it had been a day well spent.  The golden, rolling hills dotted with live oaks we had driven through were a fine sight and we thoroughly enjoyed the visit to the Lick Observatory, which neither of us had ever been to before, nor are we very likely to visit it again, considering its distance from home or from any other attraction.

"Jon had had enough for one weekend, but I was determined to make another attempt, this time from the west.  Sunday morning I headed out in Joe’s Jeep on my own, driving south down Interstate 880 and then California 101, past San Jose to Morgan Hill and then east. A very pleasant 13 mile drive into the hills took me to Coe Ranch Headquarters, where I spoke to several very helpful park rangers.  When I asked whether I could get to Hobbs Road (which on my map leads to Blue Ridge Road and then to  Bear Mountain Road)  from where we were, they said 'sure, are you on foot or on bicycle?'  When I replied that I was in a Jeep, they laughed and told me that vehicles were not allowed in the Park, except for one day a year, in April, by lottery.

"I knew that I was not going to hike the 12 miles from HQ to Bear Mountain that day, in the 100 degree heat, but I asked whether the 24 mile round-trip could be accomplished in one day, if the hiker was in good shape and started early enough.  I was told that it could be done, but that the route was brutal, with an up and down elevation change totaling more than that from Yosemite Valley to the top of Half Dome. I was advised that a 3-day backpacking trip would be the best way to go, preferably in spring.

"So that’s the plan, although brother Jon may go for the one day trek before I get around to the backpacking trip.  Meanwhile, this Bear Mountain can be seen in photo #3, somewhere out there.  Joe’s Jeep is in photo #4 looking wistfully toward the mountains.  Although I never even made it on to the map in photo #1, I enjoyed both day trips and  recommend them to anyone with the time and the inclination to visit either the Lick Observatory or the historical Coe Ranch Headquarters (photo #5), at which I spent a pleasant few minutes."

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