[Sculpin]

Winter in Napa My wife and I are wintering in Napa this year, house sitting for some old friends. My wife was born and raised here; we have been looking for a way to winter here and it finally worked out! While it has been an exceptionally cold and wet year here, the weather is still far better than in Seattle. When it is not actively dumping, the weather seems to consistently settle at 60F and sunny throughout the summer. The result is that instead of hibernating (I don’t do snow anymore), I spent 3-4 days per week on the trail this winter. Yay! Skyline Park This is a report about a place with trails rather than a specific trip. Skyline Park abuts the city of Napa. It began as surplus land belonging to the state mental hospital, but was ceded through a complicated process to the state for a park. The park consists of most of the length of Marie Creek plus the ridges on either side. While the park is long and narrow, it contains five roughly parallel trails, sometimes in sight of each other.

If you are unfamiliar with the terrain, that may seem silly, but this is not second-growth Douglas fir forest that you are hurrying to get past! The entire park is in oak woodland with some really impressive trees, and while there is a great view at the top, the experience is really about being on the trail and not about reaching some destination. With low-angle winter sun and an emerald green carpet of grass, every time you turn a corner you find yourself in a new Maxfield Parrish painting.

[Maxfield Parrish on the left, a doctored image of Skyline Park on the right.] Why are these big, old trees still here, so close to a busy town? The answer lies in the quality of the wood, or lack thereof. The first problem is you cannot get an 8 foot board. These oaks do not produce a central leader, there is no race to the sky in these hot, dry fire forests (well, in summer anyway). Each branch tip produces 4-5 new twigs each year, splayed in every direction. The one, or perhaps two, that get the most sun continue to receive sap from the trunk, while the others are eventually abandoned. The result is really crooked trees, sometimes comically so. But an even bigger problem is the wood. Coast live oak in particular is craptastic. I had a few pieces of firewood with nice patterns in the grain, so I chainsawed out a few cutting-board type pieces. Within a week of being exposed to air, the pieces had broken into splinters. Farther up valley are big Doug firs and redwoods, so there was never any need to work with these oaks. They do make great firewood! The best-known trail in the park is the Skyline Trail, which switchbacks up an open meadow with excellent views of the valley. After reaching the ridgeline, the trail meanders through the oaks. Six species of arborescent oak mix here with bay and buckeye. Skyline favors coast live oak a bit, but blue, black, and valley oaks are also plenty common, with minor populations of canyon live and Garry oaks as well. On the north side of the park, the Manzanita Trail goes through oak and manzanita forest, crossing a steep slope through scenic rock outcrops. In between are the Lake Marie (an ugly reservoir) Road, the Lower Skyline, and the Buckeye trails. Every trail is supremely scenic from beginning to end.

The lower trails all come together about halfway up the park. The locals call this location “at the big fig.” There are actually two fig trees there, although they are not marked and are a bit off trail. The bigger one must be sixty feet in diameter, with really low branches reaching the ground, and would be covered with hundreds of pounds of figs in season (alas, I have not been there at the right time of year). Past the Big Fig, both the Chapparal and Skyline trails continue to the upper gate that marks the top of the park. Beyond the gate is more land accessible to the public, and a connection to a segment of the Bay Area Ridge Trail. The upper trail switchbacks up the north side of the ridge to the top and opens out on miles of open meadows leading out to San Francisco Bay. The views really open up here, from Mt. Diablo in the south, across the skyscrapers of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge, to Mt. St. Helena to the north. On an extremely clear day you can see a faint smudge of snow in the Sierra. This area would be choc-a-bloc with palatial houses if not for one factor: the Diablo winds. These offshore winds can blow any time of year, but summer and winter are worst. The Diablo wind is a weather phenomenon unknown to us Northwesterners unless you live in the Columbia Gorge, where similar “fair weather gales” can occur. Fair weather gales are notorious in central California. They form when warm sunny weather creates a massive dome of high pressure in the Central Valley, which is sheltered from the ocean by the coast range. Atmospheric pressure remains low above the cold Pacific, so an offshore gradient forms. The result is breezy afternoons in the lowlands, and howling gales over the top of the coast range. The fair weather gale can extend off the coast in summer and swamp boats with giant waves. The day I decided to go to the top, I picked a day when the winds were predicted to be lower than they had been. Nevertheless, when I reached the meadows at the top, I actually stumbled forward when a big gust came up behind me. This image shows the high point - a grassy knoll - in the back.

Intensely scenic but not that pleasant up there. Notice the shape of the tree in the first image.

Skyline Park also has some mysterious history, perhaps the subject of another post. Mystery often surrounds the mental hospital that takes the worst patients.