Creek Freaking in San Mateo County Memorial Park

Creak Freaking is a form of hiking that involves hiking down creek beds as if they are trails. My favorite creek freaking destination in the Santa Cruz Mountains is the section of Pescadero Creek that runs through Portola State Park, Pescadero Creek County Park, and San Mateo County Memorial Park. Of course, you need to creek freak in the summer, when the weather is warm enough and the water level is low.

Before embarking on your creek freaking adventure you need to put on shoes and clothes that you don't mind getting wet, and you need to put anything you don't want to get wet in sealed plastic bags. You will also need one or two trekking poles for stability while walking on the uneven creek bed and for probing water depth. Be sure to have a dry set of clothes to change into at the end of your hike. Keep in mind that it takes a lot longer to hike on a creek bed than on a trail.

Yesterday I joined three friends for a creek freaking adventure through San Mateo County Memorial Park. We started at the Hoffman Flat Trailhead on Wurr Road, which intersects Pescadero Road just east of the main entrance to the park. At the bridge we made our way down to the creek and then walked downstream. We passed the remains of the old dam that formed a swimming area for many years before being removed in order to encourage the migration of steelhead trout and Coho salmon.

Along our way we encountered children playing in the water, lots of crawdads (crayfish), leopard lilies in bloom, and a rope swing attached to a branch that hangs over the creek. The biggest obstacle was an enormous log jam that took a while to climb over.  Continuing downstream, we saw houses on the left side of the creek, indicating that we were leaving the park. We climbed out of the creek at the Wurr Road bridge and then hiked back to Hoffman Flat via Wurr Road. It took us nearly five hours to creek freak this segment of the creek, but only about thirty-five minutes to hike back to our starting point. That is because the creek has many twists and turns, we stopped for lunch and to look at things along the way, there was a big logjam to climb over, and the creek bed is uneven and sometimes hard to see through the moving water.