A rainy Sunday morning made the perfect setting for a rare stroll through the only recently-opened Fifield-Cahill Ridge Trail at the San Francisco Peninsula Watershed in San Mateo County, 13 miles south of SF.
Hiking six miles of the 23,000-acre strip of forested hills, coastal scrub, and grasslands, this piece of watershed is a protected endangered-species wildlife refuge and contains three drinking water reservoirs that feed faucets across the Peninsula and San Francisco. Closed to the public for 100 years, SFPUC opened the area to reservation hiking, biking and riding five years ago.
Pristine old-growth Douglas Fir, mythical lime-green strands of lichen, bright yellow banana slugs, sweeping Monterey cypress, hardened parasitic fungus, expansive vistas, a particularly snappy trail leader, and our small group of 7, spent about 3 hours together this morning on the wet trail. Tim told the group, FYI, that all the lichen growing here meant this was pure air... Ahhhhhhhhhhh.
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