Welcome to the first of our new Wicked Hike Wednesday bloggos!
This week, we went out to a nearby park, Sanborn County Park, which is only a 20-30 minute drive from our house. We had been here before for a walk and explore, but we TOTALLY missed the good parts. So we headed back for another round of exploration.
As we drove up, we were greeted by a nice little dear friend in the parking lot. We stopped the car to say hi, and waited for him to go on his merry way.
And then it was time to get started! Today, we would take the parks' name-sake trail, the Sanborn Trial, which starts near the back of the park by the RV camping spots. There is good signage near the start of the trail, showing your location and optional trails. We recommend grabbing one of the trail maps here as well, just in case.
The trail starts off... well steep is a nice way to put it. I highly recommend having two huskies helping to pull you uphill! At the start, you get to walk through the walk-in campground area. There are a lot of sites here, and even on a Wednesday afternoon there were 4 or 5 sites occupied. The area is nice, and there are lots of bathrooms throughout the sites. Just based on our walk through, I would definitely recommend the sites for anyone looking for a nice Bay Area campsite.
Once through the camping areas, the trail turns from paved to dirt, and you're greeted with the wonderful sounds of nature; we were lucky enough to be there at the right time of year for there to be a little creek running!
The huskies were of course thrilled to get to "ford a river" and snag a quick drink before heading on up the trail.
Not long after the creek crossing, you come to a fork in the trail. Right will take you a way we did not go, but left will continue up the Sanborn Trail. Nali was a quick study and continued down the right path, no coaxing required!
Immediately after the fork you begin being treated to some great views. You're still climbing pretty quick quickly, so you're starting to get high enough to look into the Santa Cruz Mountains pretty well and... let's just say there is a reason we love hiking up in this area.
Not long after the fork, the trail begins to narrow. And then more, and then more. It wasn't long before the three of us, Nali Kenga and Dad, were forced to walk in a single file line to avoid walking through plants or off a cliff.
This picture above is roughly where we turned around. At this point my phone was telling me we were about 2.5 miles out, and had climbed over "90 floors" worth of elevation, whatever that means. At any rate, the trail was getting so steep that the pups were a bit hesitant, well I was too, so we decided to about-face and start our way back. All in all the doggos had been pretty good up to this point. This isnt the easiest trail with dogs. Especially as it gets more and more narrow, you've got to watch them - CLOSELY! There are plants everywhere, some of it is poison oak, and if your dogs are anything like Nali and Kenga, they are always snapping at plants. You have to micromanage the dogs, keeping them focused and on trial. There are also some spots that had the dogs a little nervous, crossing between narrow objects or over/through fallen trees. The hike is beautiful, no denying, but you cant space out and enjoy it.
As we started to head back, Nali's second wind kicked in and she wanted to pull the WHOLE way back. Well, she is a husky afterall, what should I have expected?! I did my best in the areas I was sure-footed enough to jog for her, and you could tell she just loved it. We managed to turn it in to a good pulling training session, using her "woah", "trail", and "on by" commands a lot. She did very well, and it has me very excited to get back up to Tahoe soon with them for some real sled dog work!
Overall, we loved this place.
It's scenic, quiet, and beautiful. It's also very challenging because of steep it is. Would we recommend this trail for puppies? Probably not, you want to be good on a leash. We also probably would not recommend this trail for older doggos or older hoomans.
But if you and your pup(s) are active and want a beautiful high intensity hike, this place gets a solid 5/5 from us!