A beautiful shaded hike through redwood filled trails in Portola Redwoods State Park.

Location: Portola Redwoods State Park

» Redwood Hikes Map for this Route: An excellent quality map by Dave Baselt for free. Thanks Dave!

» Official State Parks Map: A map showing all the trails but hard to read.

» Redwood Hikes Map: Annotated trail map of Portola Redwoods State Park and Pescadero Creek County Park, Second edition, 2008. This is an excellent map sold by Dave Baselt ($6.95 in Dec 2011). This map is useful for exploring a bunch of parks: Portola Redwoods, Pescadero Creek, Sam Macdonald.

» Redwood Hikes Map: Bay Area Trail Map: Saratoga to Big Basin, First edition, 2010. This is an excellent map sold by Dave Baselt ($6.95 in Dec 2011). This map is useful for exploring many parks in this area. Highly recommended for avid hikers.

A good trail map is necessary for this hike because there are many junctions along the route. Try a combination of free RedwoodHikes map and maps by Virtual Parks: top-left — top-right — bottom-right — bottom-left.

From Tarwater trail head, go down Upper Coyote Ridge Trail for 1.3 miles to reach a fork. On both sides of the fork lies Coyote Ridge Trail. Turn left and follow Coyote Ridge Trail for 0.8 miles. Hereafter, the route has many junctions. Study the trail maps to follow this route: Slate Creek Trail → Summit Trail → paved road → Iverson Trail → Coyote Ridge Trail → Upper Coyote Ridge Trail → Tarwater trail head.

Location: along Camp Pomponio Rd, La Honda, CA 94020 . No street address. Parking area is visible in Google Maps if you zoom in sufficiently.

Directions: From I-280, take Page Mill Road 8.6 miles to Highway 35, cross the road and continue on Alpine Road for 3.8 miles. Turn left onto Camp Pomponio Road (there is a park sign on the left), follow it to parking lot. No fees was charged at this parking lot in Feb 2010.

Google Maps:

Parking Fees: None (last visited: Jan 2013)

Capacity: About 10 cars

Latitude: 37.276430     Longitude: -122.224309

All trails were shaded.

Along Iverson Trail, we had to cross Pescadero Creek by foot on one occasion — there was no bridge. In Nov 2011, water was not more than eight inches deep, so we could cross over comfortably.

We saw plenty of mushroom.