Getting Out: For all the elegant beauty we enjoy in our coastal
mountains, one feature is generally missing. Our local landscape
tends to rise and dip in a gentle gradient as though formed with a
trowel. The knife work was done in the high country where deeply
cut granite leaves dizzying exposures. The Mummy Mountain Trail at
Harvey Bear Ranch is spectacular and offers a taste of high country
exposure close to home. In a couple weeks, I’d like to take you
there.
For all the elegant beauty we enjoy in our coastal mountains, one feature is generally missing. Our local landscape tends to rise and dip in a gentle gradient as though formed with a trowel. The knife work was done in the high country where deeply cut granite leaves dizzying exposures. The Mummy Mountain Trail at Harvey Bear Ranch is spectacular and offers a taste of high country exposure close to home. In a couple weeks, I’d like to take you there.
I grew up at the foot of a mountain that prompted a sleeping maiden legend because its long summit ridge looks like a woman lying on her back. Years ago, when the Bear Ranch was still privately held, Brent Bear took me on a tour. As we neared the southern portion of the property, the land quickly leapt high above the road. This, he said, was Mummy Mountain, and from the valley, I would recognize how it got its name.
It takes a little imagination, but you can picture the silhouette of a reclining figure in this distinct portion of Coyote Ridge northeast of Gilroy. The northern bump of Mummy Mountain looks like a head, a small dip is the mummy’s neck, then the body stretches out to the south. When you look, remember it takes a little imagination.
I did not know that the gate at the Mendoza Ranch entrance of Bear Ranch above Gilroy did not open until 8 a.m. So, one morning last week, I was surprised to find it locked when I arrived there a bit before. Rather than wait, I parked on Roop Road and walked from there. A short distance from the parking lot, just inside the first cattle gate, the trail forks, and I took the Mendoza Trail to the left. The path enters a forest of oaks and bay trees as it edges slowly up and around the flank of Mummy Mountain.
Ten minutes later, as the first sweeping views into South Valley appear, the Mummy Mountain Trail junction peels off to the right and begins to ascend the mountain. The Mendoza Trail continues on a level course, circling the entire mountain, but the Mummy Mountain Trail, after a short traverse through forest cover, climbs high for a ride along its crest.
Although this hike includes a modest climb of 400 feet, I was so distracted by the changing views down both sides of the mountain that I barely noticed my tussle with gravity. Vistas that, at midday, would have been spectacular had an air of dreamlike magic in the morning’s soft streaking light.
All along the ridge, the Mummy Mountain Trail teases with alpine-like exposures. After a brief ramble across a broad grassy portion of the mountain crest, with far-reaching views east and west, I was suddenly perched on a trail etched into an oh-my-gosh slope that dropped steeply away. In another likeness to its Sierra cousins, this trail includes a long masonry staircase masterfully constructed from the native stone.
This trail packs a sensory punch that you would expect to have to drive many road miles to reach, but you can probably see it out your window. Let me show you. This walk is just less than four miles with a moderately graded climb to the mountain, but you can handle it. Meet Saturday morning, April 24, at 9 a.m. at the Mendoza Ranch entrance (go two miles east on Leavesley Road, turn left on New Avenue, right on Roop Road, then 3 1/2 miles) of Harvey Bear Ranch County Park. Parking is free and water and a bathroom are available there.
