Next in my Santa Clara County Parks series is Calero County Park.
I’m a little slow on sharing my photos from my hike in Calero County Park, in the Santa Cruz mountains. I hiked at the park on weekday and then on another weekday Scott and I mountain biked. This was one of the parks listed as Covid-friendly, but I notice that it is no longer listed. I think that it might be that because it closer to town a too many people started using it. Sad, but I’m glad I got my hike and bike in while it was open.
First the elephant in the room – yes, I have been going on the occasional hike during the stay at home order. Fortunately, in our area we are still encouraged to exercise outdoors as long as we remain at the 6-feet social distancing. Our local parks and open spaces have done a great job of marking and highlighting various trails that meet these requirements. Some of them are only open during the week – which is when I go. They also have a rule that if the parking lot is full, the park is full. Given the small lots at the Open Space Preserves, this means lots of room for few people.
My hike at Calero was certainly not flat. If you look close at the map you can see all the contour lines that I crossed. Overall, I hiked 6.3 km and climbed 225 m (740 ft).
What the map doesn’t show is a new trail that led to a little confusion. I had the map provided by the park, but it didn’t have the new trail on it either. Scott and I decided to check out the new trail via mountain bike the following week. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures during the mountain bike adventures. Our ride was 16.5km and involved 249m (over 800 ft) of climbing. So far, that has been our longest and most intense ride on the mountain bikes.