No other park in the Bay Area has as many Nifty Ninety peaks as Henry Coe State Park, the largest state park in Northern California. And not surprisingly, all this acreage means that getting to these summits can be a challenge, especially for those of us that live in San Francisco. To reach Coe Ranch, the park’s nearest entrance, is a good hour and half without traffic from the city. The drive from Coe Ranch to Hunting Hollow is about an hour, and then from Hunting Hollow to Dowdy Ranch is another hour through the Pacheco Pass. It’s a really big park.
With a bit of planning and persistence, though, we managed to hike all five of them over the course of four weekends between April 28 and June 2 and utilized all three of those entrances. (The park actually has a fourth one called Coyote Creek.)
We kicked things off with a day hike to Willson Peak the last weekend in April, then alternated the following weekend with a hike Mount McAbee in Big Basin Redwoods State Park. We resumed our quest in early May and promptly tackled two Henry Coe Peaks: a bushwhack to Bills Hill and a short hike to Burra Burra Peak. The next weekend we returned to the park, same entrance, Hunting Hollow, to do a one night backpack trip to Vasquez Peak.
Taking a break from driving to Henry Coe, we did a long bike ride in Big Basin (checking off another peak) on Memorial Day before coming back the first weekend in June to finish Mount Sizer, our last Nifty Ninety in Henry Coe.
This achievement required multiple drives to the park, in particular the Hunting Hollow entrance, two hotel stays, two car camping nights, two backpacking nights, and more time in Gilroy in a month than in the decades we’ve lived in the Bay Area. But we’re happy we did it.
To read more about our hike to each of Henry Coe State Park’s Nifty Ninety peaks, click on a peak below:
- #80 Willson Peak, 2,210′
- #82 Bills Hill, 1,988′
- #83 Burra Burra Peak, 2,281′
- #84 Vasquez Peak, 2,210′
- #86 Mount Sizer, 3,216′
Follow our progress bagging the Bay Area’s Nifty Ninety here.