Home»Gallery»Portola Valley Ranch, Windy Hill, Etc.»Coal Mine Ridge Nature Preserve of PVR»Trails of Coal Mine Ridge, Portola Valley Ranch»Walking up Mid Toyon Trail

Continuing past the footbridge and the trail junction, we soon feel a change in the character of Toyon Trail. It becomes more open, and occasionally less windy. We visit different ecosystems -- some forest still, albeit a little more open, and some open hillsides covered in chaparral.

Occasionally, Mid Toyon Trail traverses a steep canyon: in one side, pivot, back out the other. Walking up the trail, one such canyon is approached along a sunny hillside, with views across the steep canyon below, across Alpine Road, toward Windy Hill and Skyline. Dark red Toyon berries frame a view of distant Windy Hill in some seasons. In summer, chaparral plants here include the sun-loving Lupine, Sticky Monkey, and fragrant California Sagebrush (Artemesia californica). Marching down the center of the canyon, a collection of Buckeye trees changes with the seasons: tender new green leaves after the rain falls; smooth hemispheres of green, mature leaves in high summer -- with spikes of white flowers attracting bees with their heady fragrance; and finally bare branches, decorated with large round buckeye seeds, waiting for the rain to signal another round of planting, leaves, photosynthesis, flowers, and back to seeds.

Turning the corner at the head of the valley, we find ourselves in a different world. Shaded, cooler, moist in some seasons. Here grow Larkspur, Woodland Shooting Star, Checkerspot and White Globe Lilies, and Blue Dicks. (Larkspur is somewhat rare on Coal Mine Ridge, in both space and time.)

Farther up, Mid Toyon Trail levels out, straightens out, and proceeds along the hillside falling down to the ever more distant Alpine Road -- gradually gaining altitude in the forest. We come to a trail junction: the newer "Upper Toyon Trail" proceeds straight ahead; the "connector trail" to the left is the terminus of the original hand-built Toyon Trail of Portola Valley Ranch. It leads up past some more Madrone (watch your head!) to a major trail junction at the top of Coal Mine Ridge. Here one can choose to walk back down Coalmine Trail or Mid Old Spanish Trail toward our starting point, or turn right along Upper Old Spanish Trail, across Ridge Rest, and either down Arroyo Trail or on up Coal Mine Ridge along Upper Old Spanish Trail in Blue Oaks.