Occupying over 4700 acres on the western slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains near Half Moon Bay, this beautiful space is one of the jewels of the San Francisco Bay area. It's also Mike's favorite place to go for a hike.
The centerpiece of the preserve is Purisima Creek Canyon, with towering redwoods, a gentle creek, and understory of ferns, berries, and wildflowers. The coastal forest along the creek includes maple, oak and Douglas fir, along with stately redwoods.
Redwoods are among the oldest and tallest trees on the earth, some having survived from the time of the dinosaurs. Most of the trees here are between 100 and 150 years old. By the early 1900s, nearly all of the original trees in this forest were logged to provide building materials for San Francisco. Today, the preserve is a second-growth forest, providing a real-life lesson in how redwood trees reproduce and grow.
California coast redwoods can reproduce by sprouting from the root crown, stump, or even fallen branches; if a tree is cut down or falls over, it will regenerate new trees, with sprouts spontaneously erupting and developing a new root system. New growth can achieve a height of 8 feet in a single growing season.
Evidence of the original forest is still visible along Purisima Creek, and it is tempting to wonder what that forest would look like today. A small number of old growth trees can still be found (Mike is sitting by one in the picture below).
A set of 24 captioned photos follows on the next two pages. Our destination on this walk was a stone bench about 2.5 miles into the preserve from its western edge, at a point above the creek where several trails converge. At that point, we retraced our steps and followed the creek back out. The pictures are evenly divided between the walk in and the walk out. Clicking on any of the small images on the following pages will open a larger image, and clicking on the larger image will return you to the index for that photo.
