February 16, 1997: Golden Gate National Recreation Area

Rodeo Lagoon to Tennessee Valley

If, at the freeway exit, you go in the other direction, up Conzelman Road, you can continue along the bluffs above the Golden Gate, with magnificent views to the south (which you can't enjoy, for fear of driving over the edge) until you come to McCullough Road. Turn right here and you will descend into the valley of Rodeo Lagoon, meeting the road described earlier beyond the tunnel.

If you keep going straight at McCullough Road, in about half a mile Conzelman Road will narrow down and descend steeply as a one-way road. Drive for a couple of miles along this road and then, at an old military site with a Nike missile sitting on a carrier in the parking lot, turn sharp right and descend. This will take you past the GGNRA Visitor Center down to the main road again.

From the parking lot, start up the Coastal Trail, which follows the old road to the Nike missile site on top of Wolf Ridge. A short way up the road, a trail turns off to the left. You can continue straight ahead, but turning left her will bring you to the top of the cliffs above the Pacific, where you can follow trails that parallel these cliffs and give you excellent views over the ocean.

You join the main Coastal Trail (the old road) about a quarter of a mile below the knoll under which Battery Townsley sits, carefully camouflaged with cypress trees. There are several possible routes here; be sure not to follow the one that contours in a level fashion along the sea-facing slopes, since this only leads over to a fenced-off section of terrain that, I think, is still controlled by the military. Climb up the road and around the southeast side of Battery Townsley, where you'll see the gated-off battery itself, with a (relatively) fresh coat of yellow paint on the outer abutments and an equally (relatively) fresh coat of grey paint inside. The paint is new enough that there is no graffiti here.

Continue on up the road as far as the north end of the knoll. Here the Coastal Trail cuts off to the right, and the road has been blocked by the park authority because of "Emergency Conditions". The emergency conditions are now about 15 years old, and date from two bad winters in the early eighties when ocean-facing slopes under the road slid away, taking part of the road with them. The rerouted Coastal Trail now leads up to a staircase through a rocky south-facing bluff; at the top, it curves to the left, still climbing steeply but without steps, until it meets the upper part of the road, just above another barrier and "emergency conditions" sign.

You turn right on the road and continue to climb. A little further up, there is a turn-off to the left. This will take you, if I remember correctly, out to a rocky outcrop with nice views to west and northwest; and, if you are adventurous, you can descend from there, cross-country and down-slope, directly to the beach in Tennessee Valley. Another very narrow made trail angles sharply upslope to the northeast, apparently leading to the top of Wolf Ridge -- the possibility of a ridge walk may seem very appealing at this point.

The Coastal Trail, however, follows the old road on up, and here you get a good idea of how fast nature can take over from mankind -- in a decade and a half, much of the road has become partly overgrown with brush, so that at one point passage is only barely wide enough for hikers to pass single file. Walking here, I was reminded of Rudyard Kipling's famous poem:

THE WAY THROUGH THE WOODS They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago. Weather and rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once a road through the woods Before they planted the trees. It is underneath the coppice and heath, And the thin anemones. Only the keeper sees That, where the ring-dove broods, And the badgers roll at east, There was once a road through the woods. Yet, if you enter the woods Of a summer evening late, When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools Where the otter whistles his mate, (They fear not men in the woods, Because they see so few.) You will hear the beat of a horse's feet, And the swish of a skirt in the dew, Steadily cantering through The misty solitudes, As though they perfectly knew The old lost road through the woods. ... But there is no road through the woods.

I feel fairly confident that in another decade and a half, much of this road will be completely gone -- completely overgrown, or washed away by new ocean storms coming in off the Pacific.

As you climb slowly, the ridge tops out to your left, then the ridgeline descends to meet you. At the point where the road finally tops the ridge, you can look back and see a nice made trail leading up along the ridge -- you didn't have to follow the road, after all, though I suspect that the GGNRA authorities are happier that you did. At this same point, the trail splits off from the road, with the Coastal Trail descending northwest toward the Tennessee Valley and the Wolf Ridge Trail contouring east around the north side of the hill on whose summit the old Nike missile base sits. From here, and on along the ridge, views to both north, over the Tennessee Valley towards Mt. Tamalpais, and south, over the Rodeo Valley towards San Francisco and beyond, are magnificent and highly photogenic on a good day.

A quarter-mile detour to the missile base on Hill 88 will be instructive. The life-span of the old Nike missiles was relatively short -- less than a decade, I believe -- because it was less than half a decade after they were deployed that the USSR launched its first test ICBM, against which the Nike missile was about as useful as an arrow is in stopping a bullet. The base was never torn down; the buildings were stripped of anything useful, but they and the old launch pads and helipads were left to nature. Again, going through these old buildings that were empty of everything except graffiti and gradually deteriorating, I was reminded of another poem, translated by Kuno Meyer from the Gaelic (the Esperanto translation is my own):

THE FORT OF RATHANGAN The fort over against the oak-wood, Once it was Bruidge's, it was Cathal's, It was Aed's, it was Ailill's, It was Conaing's, it was Cuiline's, And it was Maelduin's; The fort remains after each in his turn -- And the kings asleep in the ground.

LA FORTIKAĴO RATHANGAN La fortikaĵo apud la kverkaro, Iam ĝi estis de Bruidge, de Cathal, De Aed kaj de Ailill, De Conaing kaj de Cuiline, Kaj de Maelduin; La fortikaĵo restas post ĉiu en vico -- Kaj la reĝoj dormas sub tero.

My daughter, on the other hand, was reminded of Shelley's Ozymandias, the last five lines of which read:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Look in particular for a particular piece of grafitti -- a huge red 'A' scrawled on a wall over an inverted pentagram (the 'A' stands for "Anarchy"). According to my daughter, this particular emblem is very popular among high-schoolers these days. I have never seen mention of it elsewhere.

The prudent hiker might wish to backtrack the quarter mile to the trail junction and proceed east along the contouring Wolf Ridge Trail, along the brushy and lightly forested northern slope of Wolf Ridge. The less prudent hiker can continue east from the Nike base along the ridgetop, then drop downhill along a made trail through a break in the fence surrounding the base -- careful; this path is steep in places, and covered with lots of little rocks -- and, after descending the brushy ridgeline, eventually meet the Miwok Trail coming up from the Rodeo Valley right where it joins with the Wolf Ridge Trail. Here the Chaparral Trail turns off to the north, leading down into the Tennessee Valley about halfway from the parking lot to the sea. Go east along the Miwok Trail, however, climbing slightly, until you come, in a bit over a quarter of a mile, to where the Old Springs Trail also turns down toward the Valley to the left.

You will almost immediately cross, on a plank bridge, a little rill that contributes to the trail's name. The southward views disappear behind you as you descend. A ways further on, you come to a horse trough on the left, fed from a pipe apparently tapped into another spring; there are no warning signs here, and taking a drink from the pipe (not the trough) should not hurt you. Continue to descend, watching the valley open out to both sides, with views of the ridge opposite, which you will want to cross, as you continue north, on any of three different easily visible trails.

At the bottom, you pass through the stableyard of Miwok Stables -- keep to the right; the left hand trail, past the farmhouse, leads to the dressage yard -- and eventually reach the parking lot for the Tennessee Valley, which, on beautiful days, can be very, very full.

Don Harlow

Don Harlow <donh@netcom.com>