We had an epic weekend of hiking, trying to take advantage of the long weekend (Memorial Day), the cool weather forecast for the region and the fact that we were going to be out of town next week. I had plotted a course that would take us to four parks in order to tackle five peaks and would allow us to “conquer” several of the hikes in the South Bay in one fell swoop and achieve a significant milestone – summiting more than half of the peaks on the Nifty Ninety list.
The parks I picked are all relatively close to one another and to be efficient, can be down north to south or vice versa . In our case, the order was dictated by our parking reservation for Uvas Canyon County Park which needs to be obtained in advance from the Santa Clara County Parks website. The earliest entry slot I could get for a day pass on our desired day was between 2:00 – 3:00 P.M. and because we also wanted to break for lunch, the final sequence in which we hiked everything was as follows:
- Almaden Quicksilver County Park—Church and Mines Hills
- Uvas Canyon County Park—Knibbs Knob
- Mount Madonna County Park—Mount Madonna
- Santa Teresa County Park —Coyote Peak
We started with Almaden Quicksilver County Park, arriving a little after 9:30 A.M. and spending about 3 hours hiking to Church and Mines Hills. Ideally, we would have remembered to pack a lunch, but because we completely forgot, had to go out of our way, heading back north for a few miles, to find a place to get a sandwich. If we had gone to our next stop—Uvas Canyon County Park—directly from Almaden Quicksilver County Park, it would have only taken 30 minutes, but we ended up having to drive closer to 50 minutes given our detour for lunch.
Fortunately, we had plenty of time to get to Uvas Canyon County Park for our 2:00 P.M. parking reservation, and even got there early. The ranger let us in and we found parking in the lot closest to the campgrounds. From there it was a 10 minute walk to the trailhead and it took us two hours to hike to/from Knibbs Knob. It probably would have taken us less time but my left knee was screaming at me and I was practically limping my way up the trail.
It was a good thing that our next peak—Mt. Madonna – required no hiking. The drive to Mount Madonna County Park took about 40 minutes and had us on the back roads of Morgan Hill heading down towards Watsonville. It was a beautiful drive through a landscape of rolling hills, which reminded me of the East Bay, vineyards and a wine trail that I didn’t even know existed, and that eventually changed to towering redwood trees. As we drove into the park and up Pole Line Road, the fog swirled around us and the temperature cooled dramatically.
After reaching the top of Mount Madonna, we retraced our route back north, taking about 38 minutes to reach Santa Teresa County Park. With the longer days, we were able to finish the short hike to Coyote Peak before sunset at 8:00 P.M.
A long day for sure, and a bit crazy considering that we had just hiked all the peaks in Briones Regional Park the day before. This long day also marked the completion of our 47th peak and brought us just past the halfway mark. Hard to imagine when we started that we would have been able to get this far!
To read more about each of these South Bay hikes click on a link below:
- #43 Church Hill – 1,450′
- #44 Mines Hill – 1,728′
- #45 Knibbs Knob – 2,694′
- #46 Mount Madonna – 1,897′
- #47 Coyote Peak – 1,155′
Follow our progress bagging the Bay Area’s Nifty Ninety here.