INCH Hike: Nevermore

38. Nevermore (04/24/26)

Hikers (3): Christina, Mihail, Steve
Distance: 9 miles
Rating: 3 difficulty, 8 beauty
Park info: Henry Coe State Park near Gilroy

Steve owes a writeup!

For reasons unknown, Backcountry Weekend opened its gates earlier than usual on Friday. I like to arrive near opening to ensure good parking and, ultimately, establish camp ASAP. I suggested meeting at the River Oaks VTA lot at 6:30am. Christina rightly noted that I would be the person who hated an early start time the most, so there was a subtle joy in my self-inflicted sleep deprivation.

From there we drove to Casa de Fruta for a hike-powering breakfast. Then it was a short drive to Bell Station where we enjoyed the fastest check-in I've ever experienced.

We were starting from North Fork, which is closer to Dowdy Ranch than Orestimba. The goal was to take advantage of the shuttle system to bring us back to the car at the end. This allowed us to visit Yellowjacket Pond and Purple Pond on the way up to Mustang Peak.

Since I hadn't taken this route in many years, I spent much time geocaching the route up, which seemed to try hard to take advantage of the geocaching minimum distance between caches (0.1 miles). The hike felt easy because I was constantly resting while looking for caches. I could almost keep up with Christina until hitting a string of caches I fruitlessly searched for but could not find. After that, I didn't see the group until the end. Mihail had already set off to bag Peak 1682, which I'd done via a much different route back in 2017. He was trying to minimize the distance by starting closer to Tiedown Peak.

I eventually reached County Line Road, where I motored up its gentle incline. Upon reaching the annoyingly locked gate, there were three bikers standing around. As I climbed over the fence, they mentioned they'd seen two guys doing the same thing ahead of me, much to my great dismay (we won't have our private camp!). They did not realize the area beyond the fence was still Coe, but confirmed it on their map once I mentioned there was a camp back there. I also mentioned that the route up to Mustang Peak was on the other side of the gate. One of the guys laughed that he'd been doing it from the front for years. . .I remember doing it that way the first time, too. Looking at the map now, it's officially marked (unlike the old Coe roads we'd take the next morning).

After tagging Mustang Peak, I took the long abandoned road along the ridge until it finally dropped back onto County Line Road. A mile or so later, I left County Line Road for Raven Pond. Having been there before, I knew I'd have to drop down early to get around an arm of the reservoir to reach the primo flat land. While I was bushwhacking along the side of the hill to reach the camp area, I was surprised to hear Mihail call out. He'd been waiting to find out where the camp was--great! I would soon discover he aborted the attempt on Peak 1682. . .and skipped Purple Pond. Not great!

We set up our tents on prime locations and wondered what happened to Christina. Mihail had seen the two guys the bikers mentioned. They had been on our "island" (a.k.a. Camp Awesome 3), but moved on. We speculated where they could possibly go since they had full packs.

Mihail remembered he had his InReach, checked it, but hadn't received any distress messages from Christina. He said it was too cumbersome to send messages and Christina probably didn't have her InReach turned on anyway. After an hour or so, Christina appeared. She (unlike Mihail) had done Mustang Peak and accidentally overshot the Raven Pond turn-off, doubled back, but then continued on Deer Camp Trail where she eventually spotted our tents from that ridge. Since it was a short hike for a long day, there was plenty of time to get lost, and all was good. She even got her own camping area on higher ground.

Beers and food were enjoyed before setting off to bed just before sunset. We would be serenaded by bullfrogs all night. It turns out that bullfrogs are not indigenous and have few predators. Raccoons, skunks, and coyotes are about the only things that will eat adult frogs since there aren't many bigger birds in Coe. Oh well, we all eventually fell asleep despite their efforts.