Big Rock Ridge is the defining topographical feature of Northeast Marin, dividing Novato’s Ignacio Valley from San Rafael’s Lucas Valley. The ridge’s peak, crowned by its recognizable radio towers, forms a landmark familiar to anyone who takes the time to look up in this part of the world. And I think this kind of landmark – high up and distant – is a generally benign thing to have in one’s life: it gives a sense of solidity and permanence, aids in practical orientation, and holds out the constantly refreshing daydream of greener pastures and untrodden paths. That’s the use most people make of the ridge, probably due in part to the fact that untrodden paths have an unsurpassably low level of physical exertion required for their enjoyment. At 1,895 ft, this is the second highest point in the county, and the highest that is untamed and hence unshortened by roads and motors. Some work is required to gain the pleasures of reality rather than reverie, but those rewards are real and numerous: unobstructed 360-degree views and aquiline omniscience, breathing room above the lowland hubbub, and the company of birds and plants that eschew civilization’s crowds and tethers.
First, let’s come down to earth and get our bearings in a little more detail.
Parts of Big Rock Ridge are included in the adjoining Lucas Valley, Ignacio Valley, Loma Verde, and Pacheco Valley Open Space Preserves, as well as in land owned by Marinwood Open Space and private ranches with easements granted for public access. That’s a good chunk of territory! In fact, Big Rock Ridge is Novato’s gateway to a vast pedestrian paradise, with trails continuing south over Loma Alta and through a network of public lands all the way to the Golden Gate and beyond. This is one of the largest contiguous sections of a vision known as the Bay Area Ridge Trail, uninterrupted from San Francisco to Novato, where it suffers a small gap after the ridge here before resuming in Indian Tree and continuing over Mount Burdell and through Olompali to end at our northern border. I look forward to the day when we’ll awake to find ourselves in prime position on these big trail networks, with several hundred miles of completed Ridge Trail, Bay Trail, and SMART path laying at our feet and inviting us to step forth for long, long walks of indeterminate conclusion.
There’s something in walking that wakes up and gives life to my ideas: I’m nearly incapable of thinking when I stay in one place; my body has to be on the move for my mind to do the same. The view of the country, the succession of pleasant scenes, the tremendous open air, my tremendous appetite, the good health I gain in walking . . . all this sets my soul free, lends daring to my thoughts, throws me, you could say, into the immensity of things . . . . When it was time to leave a place, I thought of nothing but the pleasure of a good walk. I felt that a new paradise was waiting for me at the door. My only thought was to go find it.
– Rousseau, The Confessions
We might not make it that far today. For current purposes, Big Rock Ridge is topped by one main fire road that runs roughly west-to-east along the top of the ridge, accessible from various points both to north and south. Most of the trails which climb the sides of the ridge are fairly steep, as is the ridgeline road as it ascends and descends each of several successive peaks. More people climb up from the neighborhood trailheads scattered around the lower, eastern portion of the ridge, than from the single, more isolated trailhead 5-and-a-half miles west on Lucas Valley Road by the eponymous Big Rock itself, so that’s the route I’ll take today, dividing this sizeable territory into three chapters along a gradient running roughly from east to west and from lower to higher.
I. Woodlands of the Eastern Hills
The lower hills, accessible via various neighborhood trailheads sprinkled around Ignacio and Pacheco Valle, are covered with a more or less continuous mixed oak woodland, similar to much of Indian Valley Open Space Preserve (which is, after all, carved out of the foothills of this same ridge, though separated by private land from the trails discussed here). The Novato-originating routes mostly wind their shady way through forests of live oaks, black oaks, madrones, and bays, growing gradually more sunny and open as you wrap around the eastern end of the ridge above Pacheco Valle, a shift which becomes very evident on the south-facing fire roads which come up from Marinwood a little further on. Year-round residents like titmice, chickadees, juncos, and a host of woodpeckers enliven these woods in any season, including occasional sightings of the huge and wide-ranging pileated woodpecker.
This crow-sized ‘pecker is a regular resident of the area, but with a big swathe of unpeopled ridgeside on which to roam, you are more likely to hear his resounding trumpeting or spot him flying in the distance than to run into him right on your path on any given day. There are also a few notable birds to be seen here specifically in winter, such as the yellow-blazoned Townsend’s warbler and golden-crowned kinglet, or a sudden flock of cedar waxwings descending en masse upon a fruiting madrone or toyon.
As spring arrives, the woods grow louder with the rising chorus of song from both resident and migratory species. Titmice, Bewick’s wrens, juncos, and spotted towhees crescendo from January to February, while brown creepers tinkle melodiously just beyond your range of hearing. Purple finches and newcome orange-crowned warblers sing among the bounteous madrone flowers in March. In April, blue-gray gnatcatchers wheeze asthmatically and ash-throated flycatchers issue ringing ker-BRICK calls from the woodland openings created by the fire roads.
April and May are also the months when the wood warblers are on the move: yellow-rumped and Townsend’s warblers emerge from winter’s focused feeding and begin to sing before departing, orange-crowns fill the live oaks and Wilson’s warblers the bays in a competing sonic swell as they arrive, and a smattering of black-throated gray and even hermit warblers pass through en route to more northerly breeding grounds. Warblers, like many songbirds, migrate at night and then forage in woodlands along the way during the day. I speculate that the extensive forested mass planted on the topographical barrier of Big Rock Ridge might retain more passing migrants than the average isolated patch of woods; in addition to that lineup of warblers, I’ve seen other non-breeding birds like black-headed grosbeaks and western tanagers pass through in spring on multiple occasions.
John Fox
Elyse Omernick
II. Sunny Slopes Along the Way: The Chaparral
As you saunter or gasp westward along the spine of the ridge, the habitat begins to shift. While the first eastern section was approached by mostly north-facing trails into Ignacio, this next segment has multiple routes heading south into Marinwood, diversions onto which offer interludes in a strikingly different key.
The combination of orientation and elevation causes a change in plant communities: what woods there are grow drier (more open, fewer bays, more manzanita and coyote bush in the understory) and are intersected in the sunniest slopes by patches, sometimes extensive, of the chaparral community. Referred to occasionally as the “elfin forest” (by antiquated, fanciful writers that no one reads anymore), this ecosystem is still dominated by woody plants, but under the pressures of heat and water deprivation they are mostly stunted shrubs rather than real trees. Manzanita, smaller coast live oaks, and toyons survive from the woodland, but the Big Rock Ridge chaparral is mostly dominated by chamise and coastal sagebrush. While we have some chaparral on Mount Burdell, and little patches of it elsewhere, this steep and southerly-facing area of Big Rock Ridge is undoubtedly the prime sample within Novato’s walking radius.
Hot, parched, and composed of an impenetrable mass of stiff, arthritic branches: the chaparral is not very welcoming to people in its natural form. But like any other living community, it has its beauties too. December and January see the delicate white and pink-tinged flowers of the manzanitas, beautiful and smooth barked at any time of year. Moderate temperatures of spring and the cheerful orange blossoms of monkeyflower and other wildflowers enliven March and April. And what is an impassable thicket to us is a home and safe shelter to other creatures. Spotted towhees mew from the shadows in irritated invisibility, Bewick’s wrens buzz in constant high alert, and chaparral specialist wrentits surround you with their ringing, “bouncing ball” songs.
These brown, long-tailed birds are related to neither wrens nor titmice, but instead belong to their own special family. Right here is as good a place as any in which to become acquainted with “the wrentits of the world,” as Novato resident and legendary birder Rich Stallcup once affectionately summed up this family of one.
You will probably hear more wrentits than you see, giving their distinctive accelerating trills, but they are abundant enough that a little time invested in the chaparral will reliably yield an encounter with one or two, chattering through the manzanitas and emerging to investigate the bipedal intruder with quizzical but unimpressed eye before returning to their business. “Big creature. Not food. Not threat – too clumsy.” I imagine that’s about how they sum us up, helplessly confined to our trails cut through the chaparral, like a car on a narrow forest row with no place to turn around. “La-di-da. Ooh, a bug! Hm, big creature’s still there. But… still not food. Ignore it.”
The wrentit’s laissez-faire attitude towards us clumsy giants does not seem to be shared by the rufous-crowned sparrow, one of the shyer members of the chaparral. This little known species most often responds to human intrusion by scuttling under the nearest shrub, never to be seen again. To attempt a meeting with this elusive bird, “the black rail of the chaparral,” visit a nice big patch of chamise and sagebrush with some openings, such as the unnamed switchbacking trail that descends from the ridgetop fire road midway between Queenstone and Luiz Fire Roads, listen patiently on a spring morning for their song, and try to track it down. If discussing this quest with other birders, you may want to be aware that I just made up the title “the black rail of the chaparral,” but I think it has a nice ring to it and I encourage you to promulgate this appellation. Any community that adopts a familiar honorific for the rufous-crowned sparrow is on the right track and I want to be a part of it.
III. High Grasslands of the Western Peaks
As you continue travelling westward toward the continent’s end, the hills grow higher and the trees sparser. After the intersection with the Luiz Fire Road (the last route down to Marinwood) come a series of peaks: one at 1640’ (quite nice – all-around views, rocks to perch on), one at 1725’, and then the true high point at 1895’ (less nice, fenced off radio towers and so on). Up here you’re in predominantly grassland habitat, with a few groves of trees or rocky outcroppings here and there to break up the monotony of lush green grasses and rainbow carpets of wildflowers without end. It’s like how I remember Rostropovich explaining the interruptions in the stream of seamless arpeggios in Bach’s E-flat cello suite – you need a break even from genius, he would say. When I climb Big Rock Ridge in spring and see the fields of green stretching out before me, dotted with lupines and poppies beneath a sky of cloudless blue… I never feel that way. Who needs a pile of rocks to break that up?
Lark sparrows, for one. This handsome sparrow arrives in summer and is easy to see perching on the rocky interruptions, investigating the dusty trail, or climbing to a wire to sing. They join company with the scarcer horned lark (the only true lark in our area) and the furtive grasshopper sparrow (harder to spot, though audible if you retain your high frequency hearing). Meadowlarks, kestrels, and savanna sparrows roam here year-round, whether hills are green or brown. In spring, many of our lowland meadowlarks in Novato relocate to I’m not sure where, but up here on the ridge there is viable nesting habitat and this is a fine place to hear their lovely fluted songs. Look for them along fence lines or on high wires, from where they may ventriloquize their music out into the aether like a hermit thrush in a redwood canopy. Much the same migratory pattern applies to kestrels: these small, colorful falcons disperse widely in winter, but a few prime spots such as this, with open hills dotted with oaks for nesting, host our smaller breeding population.
Those are the most notable birds that stay in these highlands for an extended time, that hide among the grasses, peck for seeds on the dusty trails, or fly low over the hills seeking their concealed prey. But one of the great rewards of climbing up a big hill to take in big views is the opportunity to join the birds up above in the sky itself, the migratory species that climb over the ridge or ride the thermals over the valleys. Our main daytime migrants to be seen in passage are the sharp-eyed flyers that can feed on the wing: hawks, swallows, and swifts. Red-tailed hawks, kestrels, Cooper’s hawks, and the occasional golden eagle can be seen all year-round, but both abundance and variety of raptors increase in fall with the arrival of additional sharp-shinned hawks, northern harriers, and merlins. Some of these will stay, working the woods or hills for months. But others pass by like a southbound arrow in September or October, leaving only a mental trail on this big expanse of sky, like the fading trace of a falling star.
Migration happens both spring and fall. As summer fades, look out to see small squadrons of Mexico-bound violet-green and tree swallows as they course southeast above the ridge, occasionally turning in small, swooping circles to catch an insect or recalibrate their position in the group. These swallows are by then familiar birds, resident as they are throughout the summer, while the sickle-winged swifts offer a more fleeting acquaintance, with both the Vaux’s and white-throated species largely passing us by as purely transient visitors. It’s here on Big Rock Ridge, when I’ve climbed as high as a day’s walk from my doorstep can take me, that I feel closest to them, feel as if I’ve washed out my ears and rubbed a year’s sleep from my eyes, feel like my chains are loose and the dungeon doors are open. It is a good thing to learn to hear the birds down at our everyday elevation. But it takes a few thousand feet of climbing, step by step, to feel like I can truly hear the swifts chattering, thousands of feet higher still, invisible to sight, lost in the sun.
And then, after lunch, I’d take a blanket up to the top garden and I’d lie down under the trees in the top garden and listen to things.
I would listen to a small beetle skirting the hairline across my forehead. I would listen to a spider coming through the grass towards the blanket. I’d listen to a squabbling pair of blue tits seesawing behind me. I’d listen to the woodpigeon’s wings whack through the middle branches of an ivy-clad beech tree and the starlings on the wires overhead, and the seagulls and swifts much higher still. And each sound was a rung that took me further upwards, and in this way it was possibly for me to get up really high, to climb up past the clouds, towards a bird-like exuberance, where there is nothing at all but continuous light and acres of blue.
– Pond, Claire-Louise Bennett
Practical Details
Getting there: See the map to identify your favorite neighborhood trailhead in the eastern sections of the ridge. To shortcut to the high stuff, you can head for the western trailhead 5.5 miles west of 101 on Lucas Valley Rd. There is a large pull-off on the left across from the Big Rock, with an opportunity to turn around shortly afterwards if needed. Note that there is still about 1250’ of elevation gain from here to the high point of the ridge, although the climb from here is actually the most gently graded approach to the summit.
Getting Around: It is difficult to construct any loops along the ridge (though possible with some neighborhood walking in Marinwood), so your main options are either an out-and-back from any of the various trailheads or a point-to-point hike if you can arrange a drop-off or car shuttle of some kind. That’s fun. As with all Open Space Preserves, excellent maps are available on the official parks website, or you can consult our favorite printed map, Trails of Northeast Marin from Pease Press.
Rules and Access: The great bulk of Big Rock Ridge’s public trails fall within various Marin County Open Space Preserves and so is open to free public access 24 hours a day, but lacks amenities such as garbage cans, restrooms, or picnic tables. Leashed dogs are permitted on trails and unleashed dogs under voice control are permitted on fire roads.
Header photo: Big Rock Ridge, one of several fine shots by Noondueler in this gallery on SummitPost.
On the southern side of Lucas Valley Road, opposite Big Rock, I have observed the fabulously colorful Lazuli Bunting. As well as further up that ridge in Bay trees along the trail. A treat for sure.