[BigLarry]

Henry W. Coe State Park is a huge park (one of CA's largest) between Gilroy and the central valley, only half an hour from San Jose. It's desolate with zillions of miles of trails, streams, steep hills in every direction, and very few people dare to go there because it's so hard to climb and way out. Mountain biking and camping is legal just about everywhere day or night. Singletrack is about 30% of the park and legal except for a couple days after big rains. You can see nothing but mountains and mountains in all directions. In the summer I won't see a soul in all the 10s of miles and very many hours I ride there. Henry Coe isn't about technical single track. It's about getting way out there in the wilderness. Few riders get into it. Here's a picture portfolio of a recent 2-day epic that I hope will help explain why I love the park so much.

On April 23 & 24, a special Back Country Weekend allowed people to drive into the otherwise near impossible to reach back areas of this park. Fast Eddy offered to bring camping gear at the far end of the park for those few brave riders willing to take the challenge. Mike (Plim) and I used this as an opportunity to ride a very long and hard loop around the park.

We did 45 miles and 8000' of climbing. Many miles were so tough we only did 1 MPH with my HRM going off max.

On Saturday, we went from Hunting Hollow Entrance to Los Cruzeros via Coit Rd and Lost Spring, then via Narrow Trail over the steep Bear Mountain, down by Mississippi Lake to Orestimba Corral where Fast Eddy was waiting.
On Sunday, we went over Tie Down to Kaiser Aetna Rd, nearly straight up Scherrer Trail to Center Flats, back Wagon Rd. to Wilson Camp and down Lyman Wilson.

Here's the first climb with Mike (Plim) coming Coit Rd. Just before, a rider and his girl friend had just passed me and on the way surprised me by asking if I was BigLarry. He figured it out from my size and turtle speed, even though he'd never met me in NorCal. Turns out it was Dan51. See more here

 

[BigLarry]

Lost Spring

This was one of the few "single tracks" we went on. However, many "fire roads" were more techical and less width than this singletrack.

Lost Springs was nice with lots of switch backs and flowers. The worst was the plethora of poison oak. Fortunately neither Mike nor I were bit.

 

[BigLarry]

Narrows Trail?

Most names at Henry Coe mean the opposite, like Center Flats is one of the steepest roads on a ridge.

This Narrows Trail out of Los Cruzeros was neither narrow nor a trail. It was a very wide meadow with riding through the stream.

1. The Trail? behind us on a rock bar in the middle of the stream
2. The Trail? ahead where we get wet
3. A view to the side with Mike and another stream
4. We did 2 miles of riding in this stream. Was as hard as climbing steep hills with all the little rocks.

 

[BigLarry]

More Narrow Trail

1. A view of the stream actually from a narrow trail.
2. Towards the end of Narrow Trail, where it broadened out into a bed of flowers.

 

[BigLarry]

Bear Mountain

I wasn' t sure what path I wanted to take into Orestimba Corral, until I met Fast Eddy at Demo and he said "Whatever you do, don't do Bear Mountain! It's straight up for a mile." So just then my course was set.

Here's a view of Bear Mountain that occurs just after getting out of the stream at Narrow Trail. I was wondering what that brown strip was going straight up the side of this hill. Then realized what Fast Eddy meant. But it was too late to turn back through the stream.

1. First look at the straight up climb. This is only 1/3 of the 1200' climb straight up this hill in 3/4 of a mile. It took us an hour so we averaged less than 1 MPH while my HRM was telling me I was maxing out just pushing my bike up.

2. Looking straight down from this hill back at the Narrow Trail stream we just came from.
3. As before, a little higher up.
4. Climbing to the sky on Bear Mountain. (No bears in Henry Coe, but this mountain is a real bear to climb.)

 

[BigLarry]

Top of Bear Mountain

Here's some views from the top of Bear Mountain.

 

[BigLarry]

Mississippi Fields

As we got closer to Orestimba Corral, we met some other mountain bikers from the camp there. We went together down Bear Spring Trail to Mississippi Lake. This "fire road" was hard to even follow and I had to put on my jacket to keep from getting bush wacked by all the bushes we were pushing through. Our friends helped take pictures of me and Plim at a particularly nice section of the trail seen here.

1. Mike (Plim)
2. Me

 

[BigLarry]

View from County Line Rd.

Going down from Mississippi Lake, we got a good view of the Orestimba Wilderness.

1. Orestimba Wilderness to the east of Mississippi lake. Our camp destination, Orestimba Correl is a small patch in lower left third of picture. We go down to the right through Turkey Pond to get there. It's very steep and barely ridable with my seat all the way down.

2. View toward the south from the same location.

 

[BigLarry]

Making Camp

We finally got into the camp about 5:00, starting around 10:00 (me earlier than Mike). We set up tents brought in by Fast Eddy.

1. Mike and me by our tents.
2. First Aid center (The Rangers also brought a big tanker of water in!!!)
3. A Ham Radio operator allowed Fast Eddy to find out a third rider going separate had turned back with a broken hub, and we didn't need to go on a search and rescue.

 

[BigLarry]

Orestimba Corral Camping - More

Fast Eddy came with the Boy Scouts who are in some of these pictures.

1. Here's the troup buring old flags in a ceremony.
2. A field of yet more purple wild flowers by the road.
3. Nick - Fast Eddy's adorably cute kid.
4. Food! A snafu caused the Boy Scouts to be low on food. Ed, Nick, Mike, and me had some great pot luck with food scrambled up from all of us. We were happy!

 

[BigLarry]

Woodpecker Trail

This Woodpecker Trail is listed as a road on the Henry Coe map. What do you think?

Someone was so confused, they put their tent right in the middle of this "road" near the top.

1. Top of Woodpecker
2. Bottom pond near Kaiser Aetna Rd.

 

[BigLarry]

Tie me Down Trail

The Tie Down road is another example of how Henry Coe road is more like single track. I was thinking this should be called Tie you Up and Down trail. It was steep up and down for a long ways.

Pictures of Tie Down in no particular order.

 

[BigLarry]

Happy Camper on Tie Down Trail

Some families made it out from the camp to this local trail for hiking. Here's one happy camper.

 

[BigLarry]

More Tie Down

More views of tie down in no particular order. The grass was above our heads in some of these meadows.

 

[Bikinfoolferlife]

Quite a report, nice photos. Maybe I'll have to visit again seeing as this is a nice time of year....

 

[BigLarry]

Pig Wallow

No, I'm not describing how I ride, even though it fits.

We saw several of these pig wallows on the side of the Tie Down trail here and around Mississippi trail

 

[BigLarry]

Pinecone!

Pinecone! Pinecone! was the warning often repeated. I almost did an endo on one of these big nasty thorn cones hidden in the grass. I think Nick, Ed's son, got knocked about by one as well.

Here's a few, but many were bigger.

 

[BigLarry]

Dutch's Trail

Just east of Tie Down is Dutch's Trail. It was much better marked than Tie Down. If it hadn't been for all the hikers trailblazing a recent path through the grass, we would have had a very tough time finding our way on Tie Down. But we could easily see this Dutch's trail to the east. Next time we'll do it.

1. Wide view of mountains and Dutch's Trail from Tie Down Trail
2. Closer view of Dutch's Trail down the mountain.

 

[SHIVER ME TIMBERS]

wow that is really beautiful....makes me want to start pedaling instead of doing DH

 

[BigLarry]

Tie waaay Down

We went waaay down Tie Down to the Kaiser Aetna Rd seen below. This road is how all the campers got access.

We then climbed up Scherrer Trail (Road) on the right of this picture at a 30 degree incline up to Center Flats Rd. (Do you see a center flat in this picture!). This climb was another blazing speed of 1 MPH where we did 1400' of climbing in under one mile in more than an hour. Our legs burned just pushing up this trail that was also tough bush as well as steep.