Five Down, One to Go – Corte Madera

Only saw three hikers all day.  I really enjoyed this hike; the start was an easy warm up, under the trees; there is a dramatic middle landscape on the trail, between mountains/hills; and there is also some scrambling down and up a dry waterfall made up of boulders and rocks.  Enough to keep your hiking brain engaged and happy.  The weather was absolutely spectacular for the day; most of the first hour or so was rolling fog, which helped to keep the temperature mild.  Didn’t see any large raptors on the cliffs, but lots of smaller birds, and even saw a horned lizard on the way back – would have missed it, except it was making its way across the dirt road.  The bugs weren’t all that annoying.  But, I did put on a bug net anyway – there are a lot of bees in the flowering Manzanita bushes, and the bushes are tending to hem in the trail on the way up to Corte Madera starting at the Pinos/Espinosa/Corte Madera split.