Projektin Pescadero Creek County Park Päiväkirja

The CZU Lightning Strike Cluster Fire in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties has definitely affected Pescadero Creek County Park. Some early maps showed early lightning strikes along the Butano Ridge Fire Road. While we have no way of knowing the precise damage now, nor when we will be able to get back and continue documenting the life of the park, we can be glad of all the documentation we've already done - especially for such a large and remote park. This provides a baseline, for us as individuals and maybe even for the county parks, as we all observe how the forests respond to this event.

Please, stay safe and secure. Don't interfere or interrupt the first responders.

Jennifer

This morning we have reached precisely 4,500 observations of exactly 700 species! Very cool work! By contrast, neighboring Sam McDonald County Park, host to two bioblitzes, is not even at 500 species. Keep on visiting and recording!

This project has now accumulated over 3,000 observations of almost 600 species in Pescadero Creek County Park - that's great progress!

Dear Pescadero Creek County Park Aficionados:

Today @arnel and I changed this project to the newer style, which collects automatically. I also extended the map to include the small section of Memorial Park (including the meadow) through which one has to hike (on the Old Haul Road) to reach the west end of PCCP. These two changes have increased the total observations and species, but there are still giant holes in coverage, which I have plans to fill (and hope you do, too!).

Onward!

The PCCP project continues to grow, producing notable results. We are over 1000 observations and 300 species. I am still in the process of making it automatic, so keep entering your sightings here manually. I will keep planning more and more mega-hikes, but here are some of my observations so far.

1) The two-cars-parked-in-separate-locations strategy produces a very fine loop as follows:
Tarweed Parking area, then down the Shingle Mill Trail to the Pomponio Trail east, into Portola Redwoods State Park. Mostly downhill and a nice variety of habitats. (Following the trailmarker numbers, this is 46 to 73 to 74 to 77).

2) The Tarweed Trail loop is wonderful for the first half, but all uphill in the second, following these trailmarker numbers: 45 to 53 to 71 to 72 and back to 45/46. Only one car required, but that way back along the road is looong.

3) Parking at Portola Redwoods, access past the Iverson Cabin site (the Cabin, btw, is no longer there) to 82 and 83 is short but fun for that reason. I didn't go up the road to 80 yet, let alone 79.

4) The walk from Hoffman Creek Trailhead to Worley Flat - and Worley Flat itself, has some meadows intermixed with Redwood (trailmarker numbers 48 to 58 to 49). I've not yet experimented much beyond that.

5) Dropping down into PCCP from Sam McDonald is time-consuming, since it is minimally 1.6 miles to get to the border between the parks from either the Heritage Grove parking or the main parking lot at Sam McDonald. The borderline between the parks is just past trailmarker 33. What I can say is that it is interesting once you get there, but I haven't explored much in this direction yet.

Please add your thoughts on specific trails - and let me know who's ready to do Old Haul Road in its entirety with two cars!

Hey friends (including friends I have not yet met):

Nowhere in San Mateo County is more remote, or under-explored, than Pescadero Creek County Park (PCCP). The largest of the Pescadero Creek Complex Parks, it has over 25 miles of hiking trails, a variety of habitats, and a myriad of streams and tributaries. Hosting everything from Steelhead Trout to Santa Cruz Cypress, it is likely to reveal more gems and secrets if we make a long-range plan to collectively visit and document the place. I have made a personal commitment to do this, in anticipation of this park being on the schedule for a future BioBlitz (or two or three or twenty) as part of the coalition between Sequoia Audubon, San Mateo County Parks, California Academy of Sciences, and the California Lichen Society. It is my personal goal to walk every mile of trail within the park. This will call for some VERY long walks, careful reading of topographic maps, two-car set-ups, and companionship (for safety, for friendship, for fun, and for discovery of a wider range of organisms).

@arnel started this project a few years ago in conjunction with a Christmas Bird Count assignment here, and we are now together repurposing it for more extended iNaturalist participation. I will eventually transform it into an automatic project, but for now I am retaining it as a traditional opt-in project, so remember to document anything you see in PCCP and add it to the project manually. I know it is something of a pain, but it is only temporary, until I can clarify the borders of the park (specifically the northern border with Sam McDonald) to my satisfaction (right now, iNat is defaulting some observations made in Sam McDonald to PCCP).

For those of you who don't know this park, there are three RELATIVELY easy access points -
1) from the west, the Hoffman Creek Trailhead is contiguous to Memorial Park on Wurr Road. This is the easiest access point from Pescadero and the coastside.
2) from the east, the Camp Pomponio Road comes off (rather inconspicuously) from Alpine Road, and leads to a parking area for the Tarwater Trailhead
3) from the southeast, there are numerous contiguous trails that start from WITHIN Portola Redwoods State Park (trail markers 77, 80 and 82 if you are using the map)

There are also the following difficult points of access
4) Dropping down into PCCP from Sam McDonald can be done on the East Brook Trail (see trail markers 29, 30, 31, 32, 33) from near the Hiker's Hut
5) Dropping down into PCCP from Sam McDonald can also be done on the West Brook Trail from near the Jack Brook Horse Camp (see trail markers 27, 28 for orientation to this). This trail may be closed due to bridge damage currently (as of 2019)
6) There is a private property easement to/from Big Basin Redwoods State Park (see trail markers 84, 85 for orientation), but this is currently closed at least through the summer of 2019 (see the notice on the Big Basin home page for more information - http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=540 and take a look at the park map's northeastern point for a sense of where that easement enters - http://www.parks.ca.gov/pages/540/files/BigBasinRedwoodsFinalWebLayout2018.pdf )

Fascinating history of the park, and why it is so undeveloped - that's how the people wanted it! This article also contains a full list of all the creeks and tributaries in PCCP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pescadero_Creek_County_Park
This article details how the undeveloped state of PCCP may be the only good thing ever to have come out of Proposition 13 - https://parks.smcgov.org/pescadero-creek-park-history
The park map can be accessed here - https://parks.smcgov.org/sites/parks.smcgov.org/files/PescaderoComplexMap-Nov2018-FINAL-web-formatted.pdf

Look for more announcements soon, but keep this one on file, due to the links and explanations herein contained.

Jennifer Rycenga
a.k.a. gyrrlfalcon