Harvey Bear/Coyote Lake Ride Report
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Based on a suggestion from "Roy" in my guestbook, I decided to explore Coyote Lake/Harvey Bear Ranch County Park in San Martin. This 4,595 acre park includes Coyote Lake and several former ranches. Since I had some time and the weather was nice, I decided my goal should be to try to ride all of the trails in the park.
I started in the main Harvey Bear parking lot off of San Martin Avenue. Head straight for the hills and avoid the flat paved paths near the parking lot. Go through the first cattle gate (not the one to the left...it is a dead end) and start ascending.
Since I wanted to ride all of the trails, I tried to map out a route that got to all of them. This meant taking the first left onto Harvey Bear Trail. This trail and the following trails are fairly wide (fire road width), well groomed trails that seem to be targeted for equestrians. The terrain is generally hilly grasslands, but the slopes are generally moderate. Harvey Bear Trail ascends the hill, but takes a comfortable, roundabout route rather than a direct assault on the hill. I passed the first junction and headed to Coyote Ridge Trail (it seems like many of the parks around here have a "Coyote Ridge Trail", so why should this park be different?). This trail continued the climb up to the ridgeline. At the top and just to the side of the trail there is a great view down to Coyote Lake and the next ridge over. In springtime, there is a large field of bright gold wildflowers and blankets a good part of the hillside. This is definitely worth checking out. I continued riding along Coyote Ridge, following the contours of the ridgeline. To make it easier to ride all of the trails, I passed the first trail junction and rode on to the junction with Rancho San Ysidro Trail. I turned around here and rode back up to the previous junction and turned left onto Willow Springs Trail. After a short ride, take the first trail on the right onto Townsprings Trail. This trail is much narrower than the others (wide single track) through taller grass and weeds as it ascends back up to Harvey Bear Trail.
Taking a right on Harvey Bear Trail and going back up the hill and passing the junction with Coyote Ridge where I previously turned took me up and over the crest of the ridge. Once over the crest, you descend toward the lake. There is a short spur down to the dam and a parking lot which is a worthwhile excursion since this gives you a water-level view of the lake. I also noticed a variety of water fowl around the lake.
After going through another gate, you are on Calaveras Trail. This is a narrower trail (only by comparison to the other
road-width trails) that runs parallel and above the lake's shore. Rather than grass lands, this is a mixture of oak forest and
grass. I noticed that there were lots of animals on the trail, including a good size herd of wild pigs, wild turkeys in several places,
red-winged blackbirds, quail, and assorted other animals. The trail is basically flat and follows the contour of the hillside, making
this a very enjoyable ride. At one point, I went through the field of wildflowers that I had seen from above on Coyote Ridge. This
was pretty spectualar as the whole open hillside was densely covered with these flowers. I continued on this trail and through
another gate and took the Valley Oak Trail, continuing to follow the same hillside contour. This section seemed a bit more
wooded but was still beautiful.
Turn right at the next trail junction onto Campground Trail and right a short way up the hillside, returning to Coyote Ridge Trail, where I turned left and through yet another gate. A short way beyond this gate is another junction. Since the remainder of the current trails form a loop, I decided to turn right onto Mendoza Trail. This trail works its way around and up the hill, providing a good view of the valley below and some "McMansions" near the hill. This trail had the roughest surface of any trail in the park as it had been roughed up by some horses while it was still wet and had dried with lots of hoof prints baked into the dirt. At the far end of the trail, there is an unnamed pathway up the hill (this trail has been marked as "Not a Trail" since then). I explored this and discovered that they are putting in a new trail along the ridgeline. It looks like a lot of this trail has already been cut and it looks like it might be ridable. I did not explore this further. On a later ride I discovered a new trail (currently marked as "Not a Trail") connecting to the southern end of Coyote Ridge that will probably be the bottom of this new trail. I expect to see this trail opened in the near future. I descended on Mendoza Trail down to the end of Coyote Ridge Trail.
I was now at the far end of the park, so it was time to head back. I rode Coyote Ridge Trail along the ridgeline, passing the Campground and Calaveras junctions up to the junction with the Rancho San Ysidro Trail. I had been at this junction before when I did the Coyote Ridge/Willow Springs/Town Springs loop. This time, I turned left onto Rancho San Ysidro Trail and started descending. This was a pretty nice ride. There is a new trail, Savannah, that is not yet listed on the maps but which is properly signed on the trail that I took. This is a left turn onto this trail. It winds around the hillside towards the western edge of the park with a slight downhill until you get to a small bridge over a gully (work is just being finished on this approaches to this bridge), after which it starts ascending at an easy rate. This eventually takes you back to the Rancho San Ysidro Trail and then to a junction with Willow Springs Trail. Turning left at this junction staying on this trail takes you back to the main parking lot to complete the trip.
Of course, you could enter the park using the Coyote Lake entrance and park in one of the paved parking lots or use the Mendoza Ranch entrance. I haven't tried starting from here, but it would just start the loop in a different place. The Coyote Lake area would be a better start/end point if you are bringing non-riding family or friends or if you bring small children or beginners for a ride since you could stay on the lake side and avoid a lot of the climbing on the Harvey Bear side.
Harvey Bear/Coyote Lake is a nice ride. It was a bit short on technical challenge as most of the trails were too wide and over-groomed for hard core mountain biking, but it still makes for a good ride to get in some miles and ascent without a gut-wrenching climb. In fact, the more times I ride here the more I like it as an example of classic California cross country riding. The combination Calaveras and Valley Oak trails was a great ride and it seems like it would be a great place to take a beginner for their first ride. It is very pretty in the spring when the air is cool, the grass is green and the wildflowers are in bloom, but I suspect that it could get pretty warm out there in the middle of summer.
I have discovered that the trails here can get a bit chewed up in the rainy season due to cattle (grazing) and horse (riding). The impact seems greatest on some sections of Calaveras and Valley Oak, but I also noticed some effects on Willow Spring.
For a description of the race I did at Harvey Bear, see the race's ride report. This was a lot of fun and I thought it was a good course (based on my sample size of 1 race).