Aug 2 - 5th Hike - El Corte de Madera

This week we hiked at El Corte de Madera Creek Open Space Preserve, off of Skyline Road.
It was a five-hour hike, and I am dedicating it to the below wonderful people who donated since the last time I posted here: Katherine L, Heidi R., Michelle W, my cousin Doug, and Rob S, with Heidi weighing in as the top donor for the week, and Pat still the record-holder overall.

I actually felt much better after this hike than I did for Castle Rock, even though even here there were a couple of "fun" hills!

Here I am posing in the parking lot before the hike.
Note the new poles, here on their 2nd hike. I'm again glad I have them, because several of the hike choices in the Smokies require poles.
Also note the low-calorie Gatorade drink in the pocket of my pack.
I had bought two of these and was going to save one for next week, but wound up bringing two to help balance out the pack. I was really glad the 2nd one came in handy, as I was able to give it to a fellow hiker who had run out.

Here is Yvonne and our Team Manager, Tifin. Both are in the "medium" hiking group that I'm in (which relates to the speed of the hiking.

We're taking our first break of the hike, at an observation deck near the "Sandstone Formation" as marked on the map. This was oddly similar to the Castle Rock stone formation where we first stopped on the Castle Rock hike.
Note Tifin's cool yellow walkie-talkie, which the staff uses to talk to each other and check on how the different groups (hiking separately) are doing.







The big challenge of this hike for me was the FIR TRAIL - which was about .6 miles of steady climbing. I guess .6 miles doesn't sound like very much but by the time we got to the top and I turned around to take this picture, it felt like at least 6 miles!

At least there were respites of flat ground in between, which we were lovingly calling "deceptively flat ground" because it often looked like we were done. Then we rounded a curve...no! More hill!
Again, I have to thank my poles for getting me through this one. There was also rocky terrain going up (although not as much clambering as Castle Rock) so it was nice to have the poles there for support.





I couldn't take a picture of myself hiking up the trail - here is my fellow hiker Bob, making his way to the clearing at the top where we all took a break to eat and drink.













And here we are taking our break! Our group hung out for a bit with the "faster" group - and we were all kind of spread out so I had to get a little ways away to get everyone together.


There were so many mountain bikers in this park - it was kind of crazy to see them hurtling down (and up) such rocky trails.

In the middle of the hike, on the Resolution Trail, we saw part of a crashed airplane from the 40s. Apparently a plane flying from Asia to SF had crashed there - there's only a few little pieces left but some of them are right by the sides of the trail.

Near the end, before we went up the last big hill before finishing our loop, I was really starting to feel good. We were in this beautiful shady area with switchbacks going back and forth, and it was actually starting to feel more effortless as we powered on to the end.
Then we had to get up the last hill, but luckily there were all these mountain bikers who had run out of steam and were walking their bikes up the hill too.
Made me glad I just had to get me and my body up the hill, and not a whole bike too!

Afterwards we went to Alice's Restaurant which is apparently the in place to be for outsdoorsy folk - bikers (motor and pedal), hikers, horse riders, etc (and anyone else up on the mountain) on the weekend. Everybody all hanging out. I guess this is a tradition that the HFD teams come to Alice's when at El Corte de Madera and the other parks in the area.