A One-Way Downhill Hike on Windy Hill

Windy Hill Open Space Preserve is an extraordinarily scenic and ecologically diverse1,335-acre piece of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The problem with picking this preserve for my College of San Mateo and De Anza College field trips is that a loop hike from the bottom  to the top would greatly exceed the 4.5-6.5 mile field trip parameters, not to mention an elevation gain and loss of about 1,400 feet.  To keep the distance down to a manageable distance we used a car shuttle from the Portola Valley entrance to the northern Skyline Boulevard entrance and then, after ascending to the summit of Windy Hill, it is virtually all downhill. Our one-way hike was about 5.3 miles.

The problem with carpooling from the Portola Road entrance in Portola Valley on a Saturday is that this is a very popular hiking/biking/running/dog walking destination. The parking lot was completely filled by the time I arrived at 8:45 am and I grabbed one of the last roadside parking spaces along Portola Road near the preserve entrance. When the students arrived after 9:00 am I directed them to the parking lot about .4 miles north at the Portola Valley Town Center. There is a footpath that connects the Windy Hill parking lot with the town center.

We carpooled about 8 miles to the northernmost Windy Hill parking lot, which is north of the main parking lot with the picnic tables. From there we hiked uphill to the breezy and aptly named summit. On a clear day you can see San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean from the same place. We could see the bay, but the coast side was obscured by clouds.

From there it was nearly all downhill on the Anniversary Trail, Lost Trail, Hamms Gulch Trail, and Spring Ridge Trail. There was a short segment of the Hamms Gulch Trail that was washed out and required a muddy climb over a fallen tree. We saw many wildflowers along the way, including dandelions, poppies, checker bloom, lupine, cow parsnip, forget-me-nots, giant wake robin trilliums, milkmaids, both fat and slim Solomons seal, crimson columbine, and blue dicks. The ecology changes dramatically as the route descends from the moist Douglas fir forest near the summit to the drier oak woodlands at the bottom.

Near the bottom of the hike we crossed the San Andreas Fault, which forms the boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. Near the end of our hike we passed Sausal Pond, which is a sag pond formed by a curved section of the fault that subsided. In the pond we saw two bull frogs and a pond turtle.

TO GET THERE... From Highway 280 take Alpine Road or Sand Hill Road to Portola Road. The trailhead is just north of the Sequoias retirement community in Portola Valley.