Reinhardt Redwoods

Hike Review

I’ve hiked here before and although it was completely different this time as it was a night hike, my feelings towards the park the trails remain the same.

What I Learned

• I had never night hiked in the rain before and I had a great time... though I’m not sure if I would enjoy it much if I did this one alone.

• As with most night hikes, the visible world shrank as I could only see what was lit by the headlamp. But when it rained hard our hearing was also limited. Having the senses handicapped was a new and interesting experience for sure.

Friends

I hiked this with Cassie. It was great fun, even though it was dark, wet, slippery, and muddy—because the company was so good. My favorite part of this hike was either meditating with Cassie near the creek or trying to guess where the Milky Way was in the sky.

What Happened?

4.4 miles, 2 hrs 23 mins, 1147 ft of ascent

After such a fun time hiking with Cassie, I wanted to see if she’d be interested in a night hike and when I asked, she said yes! When we drove into the park, it was completely abandoned with no other cars in sight. After parking, we put on our headlamps, made sure we were as close to as waterproof as possible and started hiking.

We were thinking that the ground would be muddy, given that it had been raining all day, but were surprised to find that the hard-packed dirt was like a rock and wouldn’t turn into mud. However, there was a thin, slippery layer of leaves and decomposed plant matter that made things interesting (I may have fallen on my butt once...). We carefully made our way down to the creek that I thought would be overflowing.

When we got there, the creek wasn’t overflowing at all! I was confounded as I had assumed it had rained as hard in Oakland as it had in Palo Alto. But we enjoyed the creek anyway, especially when we mediated in rhythm with the burbling of the creek.

We also took a few opportunities to turn off our headlamps, let our eyes adjust to the darkness, and revel in the stars that we could see. There was much light pollution, but still, we made out enough stars to imagine the enormity of space and our tiny place in it.

The park closed at 10 pm, but we still made a short stop at the overlook to think about dinner and life, then made it back to the car to turn those dinner plans into reality.