Henry Coe state park is a magical place in the spring, it has my three favorite landscape elements in CA ; green rolling hills, magical early morning fog and beautiful old growth white oak trees. The best time to hike Henry Coe is after the rains when everything is green and creeks are rushing everywhere. In summer, it gets really hot in this part of the bay.
I got a chance to hike the Hunters hollow area of Henry Coe State park in the second week of March. The weather was absolutely perfect, cloudy but warm. In my excitement to do the hike I forgot all about the hikes. Consequently fording all the creeks was a real mess. We had to cross about four creeks on our loop trail. I decided to take off my shoes for the first creek, but ended up fully drenching my shoes on the next creek. In the end since it was warmer, I was not as miserable as I expected to be, after an hour of walking the socks dried out almost fully. Mental note for next time, make sure you carry your Keen's when you hike in this part of the bay in the spring.
Once you are past the creeks, the trail starts climbing gradually on the way to Wilson peak, this is a gradual beautiful climb with stunning views of the surrounding hills. As we were climbing uphill we hit a pocket of fog which completely shrouded a grove of white oak trees. For a photographer this is the equivalent to being in Disneyland. I spent about an hour shooting the various magnificent oaks in the area.
As you get closer to Wilson peak, the trail gets steeper and much more colder due to the wind. We took a small break at Wilson peak to polish off our lunch. We also saw a lot more bicyclists making their way up the trail from the other side. The way down proved to be much shorter and much more steeper than the other side. With my 20lb backpack some of the sections were fairly dicey, I can't believe anybody would enjoy cycling up this monster of a trail. Finally as we got closer to the parking lot we had to ford one last creek to finish up our trail. Even though my shoes were drenched from my poor planning, this was a very enjoyable hike and I would like to do it again next spring.