A Ride To Santa Teresa Park and a Hike

I rode about 11 miles to Santa Teresa Park and went on one of my favorite hikes, a steep jaunt up to Coyote Peak, then a descent via a more circuitous route with a gentler grade on Hidden springs trail. It reached 100 degrees later in the day, but I left extra early to beat the heat. It helps that a good chunk of the hike was shaded.

I started the hike along the Ohlone trail, named after the Native Americans who lived in this area. It is a beautiful rolling trail skirting the foothills, favored by runners. This is the Santa Teresa golf course and the Santa Teresa neighborhood of San Jose from the trail:

I turned left up the Coyote Peak trail from Ohlone. This is a steep climb but beautifully shaded with Oaks, laurels, and other trees:

The shade party is over a while later when you enter grass and shrub country. The tower is on top of Coyote peak. It looks deceptively close here but the route to get to it is roundabout:

Final Approach up the shoulder of Coyote peak, with the Santa Cruz mountains in the distance and a peek at the Almaden valley to the right:

View from the peak towards downtown San Jose, unfortunately a bit obscured by smog. There are a million people in San Jose, two million in Santa Clara county, and millions more in the adjacent Alameda and San Mateo counties. All of that is sprawled out north of here:

But what I like about this area is that with all that population, people have fought hard to put aside a lot of open space. This is looking more to the left from the same spot. This looks out on thousands of acres of open space:

A selfie to prove I was really there:

This is looking to the south towards Morgan Hill. El Toro is the bump you see just to the right of center. It looks tiny from this distance but is actually 1427 feet:

I like this picture because it looks like something from a “post-apocalyptic” movie. When IBM research was built in the early ’80s, they donated 150 acres to Santa Teresa park, and also funded a new Bernal road. This is the old abandoned Bernal road, where hidden springs trail crosses it. Mother nature has been reclaiming it for more than 3 decades:

A side trip up Laurel Canyon on the way back. This was really pretty, the picture doesn’t do it justice. And it was getting hotter by this time so the shade was welcome: