Happy Friday everyone! I hope you are ready for a great weekend!  After days and days of stormy, rainy, cold weather here in the Bay Area the skies cleared out the last couple of days and we had glorious sunshine 🌞.  Sunny skies were beckoning me to get outside and do something nature oriented – that’s why when my friend Padmini asked if I wanted to join her on a hike on the Sierra Azul trail off Hicks Road in the Santa Cruz Mountains I didn’t think twice – I just said YES!

I had a spectacular start to my Thursday morning. A fun hike with good friends in the great outdoors with the most gorgeous scenery.  Life is good 😊.  Mother Nature is amazing.

The Sierra Azul open space preserve is right in our back yard in Los Gatos, a mere 10 minute car ride to get to the base of the trails and go on as long a nature-hike as we want. Sierra Azul covers over 18000 acres of open space and wilderness and is part of the southern area of the Santa Cruz Mountains just south of the Town of Los Gatos and east of the Lexington Reservoir.

As with any large hiking area the Sierra Azul trail can be reached from multiple directions, off Hicks Road from Almaden Valley in South San Jose and also from The Town of Los Gatos through the mountains. Because of the recent storms though the roads leading to the trails from the Los Gatos side were closed, so I met my friend Padmini in Almaden and we drove up from South San Jose past Almaden Quicksilver Mines and the Almaden reservoir towards the Sierra Azul wilderness trails.

Here is a look at the spectacular Sierra Azul hiking trail on the southern area of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

In Spanish Sierra Azul translates to  “Blue Range.”
These pictures show how spectacular these blue ranges can be.

Hiking the trails with friends Padmini and Chitra.

Walking past streams with water so clear that it looked positively drinkable!

Morning in the Hills
by Bliss Carman on discover poetry.com

How quiet is the morning in the hills.
The stealthy shadows of the summer clouds
Trail through the cañon, and the mountain stream
Sounds his sonorous music far below
In the deep-wooded wind-enchanted cove.

Surely some God contrived so fair a thing
In a vast leisure of uncounted days,
And touched it with the breath of livng joy,
Wondrous and fair and wise. It must be so.

The Sierra Azul hiking trails can be reached from the town of Los Gatos and from Almaden Valley in South San Jose. For more information on this gorgeous hiking area, which includes the newly opened Mount Umunhum take a look at these links.

Sierra Azul Open Space Reserve and Wilderness Area   California All Trails.com  Sierra Azul to Lexington Reservoir with Mount Umunhum

Wish you a wonderful weekend!