Getting Out

Local backcountry

Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine is a local outdoors columnist and avid hiker.
Ron Erskine
Latest posts by Ron Erskine (see all)
“I have been meaning to get up there.”“It’s been 10 years since I visited the park. I have to go back soon.”When I talk to people in our community, many who have lived here for decades, I am surprised how often I hear remarks like this about Henry W. Coe State Park. [...]

Rolling countryside

Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine is a local outdoors columnist and avid hiker.
Ron Erskine
Latest posts by Ron Erskine (see all)
One in eight Americans call California home, making it more and more difficult to find solitude in one of our national parks. In 2017, over four million people visited Yosemite; Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks eclipsed two million visitors for the first time. But a bit [...]

Hidden in the Sierras

Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine is a local outdoors columnist and avid hiker.
Ron Erskine
Latest posts by Ron Erskine (see all)
The most visited Sierra playgrounds are alongside mountain passes traversed by the main highways that cross the range. Donner Summit, Echo Summit and Carson Pass are examples that come easily to mind. These areas offer special sights to be sure, but often in close company with [...]

Beneath our souls

The Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Range are part of the American Cordillera, a continuous range of mountains that runs along the west side of the New World from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. [...]

Rancho San Vicente

Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine is a local outdoors columnist and avid hiker.
Ron Erskine
Latest posts by Ron Erskine (see all)
At the bottom of the Almaden Valley, the hiking trails of Calero County Park crisscross the slopes above the park’s namesake reservoir. If you have recently traveled McKean Road, you may have noticed some construction hubbub a half mile below the reservoir dam. Work at the [...]

Years long passed

Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine is a local outdoors columnist and avid hiker.
Ron Erskine
Latest posts by Ron Erskine (see all)
The East Bay Regional Parks District boasts 121,397 acres of land preserved in 73 parks, and I have visited no more than a handful of them. In an effort to trim this ignorance, I recently reached out to two East Bay friends. Margaret Campos and Beth Ludwig, two hiking buddies [...]

Pacific Flyway

Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine is a local outdoors columnist and avid hiker.
Ron Erskine
Latest posts by Ron Erskine (see all)
Prior to the intense settlement that began with the gold rush, California’s Central Valley was an immense wetland. A representative of California’s Department of Water Resources once told me that in wet winters one could nearly row all the way across it to the Sierra [...]

Getting higher

Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine is a local outdoors columnist and avid hiker.
Ron Erskine
Latest posts by Ron Erskine (see all)
Last September, Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District opened the restored summit of Mount Umunhum, site of the iconic radar tower that has overlooked the Santa Clara Valley since 1957. The five-mile serpentine drive up Mount Umunhum Road will take you to a 3,486-foot perch [...]

Into the crisp air

Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine is a local outdoors columnist and avid hiker.
Ron Erskine
Latest posts by Ron Erskine (see all)
After a dry December, it looks like some rainy weather may be in store. Hopefully, it won’t be long before the hint of green in the hills grows rich, the creases in the hills gurgle with runoff, and the flowers begin to pop. If you just pulled into town or have never hiked our [...]

Three seaside settings

Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine
Ron Erskine is a local outdoors columnist and avid hiker.
Ron Erskine
Latest posts by Ron Erskine (see all)
Outdoor photographer and mountaineer, Galen Rowell, wrote that a landscape is most alluring at the edges; where the mountains rise above the plains or a stream divides a lush meadow. But no scenic boundary has stirred humankind’s imagination through the ages more than the [...]
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