Went to Mt. Tam this weekend and finally hiked its southwestern flank, the one that pours into movie-worthy and mad-tourist-hangout Muir Woods. It's heavily forested, and from Panoramic Highway, the road you take to short cut from Highway 1 on the south to Pantoll Ranger Station (and beyond, including a shortcut to East Peak, the mountain's stone ranger-hutted tallest point) -- passing the scone-spot Mountain Home Inn -- this section of Tam offers mysterious, fog-shrouded views of its redwood underbelly and possibly the only side of the mountain with all-year-running creeks.
Everytime I go to Tam, I'm impressed by the variety of landscapes that a single trail offers; it's a constantly-shifting landscape - one point open, with dry, dusty soil, another forested and rain-forest wet, another just woodland-like. Rolling, soft-footed paths, hard, up-and-down rutted trails, ocean-view meadows, powerline vapidity.
The redwood trees themselves in Muir Woods -- which is larger than you initially might think with its curated, bulk-touristed presentation and is actually free anytime (saving you the $7 per adult entrance fee and a much more organic, in some ways impressive intro) by backcutting in from any of the many trails that network into the park -- like the old-growth giants elsewhere defy the brain. Their heights keep going up and up. For the video above, I had to limbo back, almost bending over to get the crowns and rainy sky. Makes the chest swell ...
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