2025 Trip Chronicles: Page 1

Red Hills Management Area

This was my first photography work of 2025 using my Sony a6700 that I first began using a year ago during the spring of 2024. The setup for the camera was difficult due to complexity, use of necessarily terse terms given display space, the considerable custom button and control options, and a lack of online information on various new features given the model's recent release for features like focus bracketing.

My solution last spring was to tediously copy the display select and option terms into a lengthy hierarchy structured Excel file. During the summer's field work, I changed some of those initial settings chosen but later back at home, never went back to update the document. So the Saturday before leaving Sunday March 23, 2025, I spent 3 or 4 productive and memory recalling hours going through many of the Menu functions concerned with shooting and remote control. There found and updated the document for several important functions including changing a few incorrect settings that I found that I had managed to inadvertently change over months. That effort also required having the quite excellent user manual open and also web searching windows looking for more detailed descriptions and purposes for numbers of terse options.

Eight days before on Saturday March 15 while snow skiing at Dodge Ridge, I had modestly overstressed my lower back muscles, so stayed away from skiing last week, that healed well in about 5 days. On the drive home along SR108 had surveyed the Red Hills area and found goldfields exploding given heavy rains that left small ephemeral streams draining landscapes. Weather forecasts for that area showed a low breeze window for March 23 through 25 necessary for my focus stacking work. Thus on dawn Sunday morning April 3, 2025, with gear to possibly overnight twice, drove 125 miles over 2.5 hours across the valley arriving at Red Hills about 8:45am PDT. This is about 7 miles west of Jamestown.

Red Hills Management Area

I first worked a blooming buckbrush subject against blue sky along the gravel South Serpentine Loop Road that was after attempted processing, unusable due to breeze lack of registration of vegetation elements between shots. In fact, the breeze all day was higher than forecast making my work slow and tedious waiting for breeze lulls.

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There is one good parking spot up that road along the stream with a nice goldfield flat. I settled on standing a bit within the shallow stream creating a split view frame. California goldfields, lasthenia californica, buckbrush, ceanothus cuneatus, gray pine aka digger pine, pinus sabiniana. Because of cattle grazing upstream, the stream has a heavy algae load. Note after storms, there are plenty of nearby smaller clear water streams seeping directly out of bedrock.

Notice the rusty red and waxy cyan color of the soil and rocks of this serpentine geology. Serpentinite is California's official state rock. Serpentine soils are unique and house only those plant species that can tolerate extreme conditions of low amounts of calcium and high amounts of magnesium, relatively heavy concentrations of nickel, chromium and other heavy metals, low levels of nitrogen and poor nitrogen uptake. Because dominating invasive Old World grasses unleashed by European settlers, most California landscapes look very different than centuries ago with far fewer wildflowers. These serpentine areas where Old World plants cannot grow are one of the few exceptions where we can experience native California annuals.

Serpentine Soils and Plant Adaptations

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From there I then climbed a couple hundred feet exploring the south slope of hill 1518. Eventually settled on the above modest subject where I was able to position some of the white highly fragrant buckbrush blossoms up in the blue sky. Note the whole zone was rather fragrant from all the blooming buckbrush that overwhelmed the fragrant when fresh goldfields. Note the few scattered blue dicks, dichelostemma capitatum. On any of these images, select the enlarged vertical slice view links to see how sharp these images actually are.

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For those casually visiting this area, the areas beside paved Red Hills Road provides some of the best flowers. The end of March often displays peak greenery with wildflowers. After winter storms wane in early April given its low elevation, landscapes quickly dry though numbers of late spring species like clarkia's still rise amid browning grasses. And note, the goldfield blooms are always short lived that quickly change to a duller yellow brown. The above subject was right along that road. This is an example of a subject with extreme depth of field impossible even if stopping down to small apertures with single lens shots, that are now possible due to focus stack multi shot blending. I placed a dense patch of butter-and-eggs aka johnny-tuck, triphysaria eriantha, at frame top center. Note the small white flowers, possibly a cryptantha species, I have not yet ID'd.

By late Sunday morning, a surprising number of visitors were driving through Red Hills Road apparently alerted on social media to the bloom within an otherwise weak, drier Northern California wildflower spring. I was however mildly dismayed at how so few in this era, obviously mostly from urban areas, actually ever got out of their gawk from vehicles, much less hiked about.

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At mid day, I drove to SR108 then parked at the Eastwood Ravine dirt road. I then set out east most of a mile before setting up the above stronger subject where I looked for the most spectacular blooming buckbrush to foreground the background green oak woodland. Around the buckbrush are soil chemically inhibited grass free zones where instead goldfields colonize. The dominantly Old World grasses only colonize soil areas where erosive soil from woodland areas above that have washed down.

In the background are blue oak, quercus douglasii, the dominant oak species about much of lower elevation inland California that are deciduous, losing leaves during winter dormancy. At this time of early spring, leaves appear and for a brief few weeks those trees have various lusher green hues before with days of harsh sun and heat change to the dull blue green of summer. Note a patch of butter-and-eggs frame mid right edge. These lush landscapes also support a thriving community of small burying underground rodents leaving clumps of upturned soil as well as their secretive prey species.

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Generally, poppies are spotty in these lands with the majority foothill poppy aka tufted poppy, eschscholzia caespitosa, that are less saturated orange than our famous state flower species. There are also smaller frying pan poppies in bedrock areas. Due to increasing breezes, I waited a long time to trigger the shutter for each capture in this 2 column stitch blend. In the foreground, are also bird's eye gilia, gilia tricolor. Note both species petals close up by late afternoon and then slowly open by next late mornings given sun and warmth. Thus, not productive landscapes to apply usual "early morning better light" photography with. Rather visit mid morning to mid afternoon that is also arguably more colorfully saturated given our temperate lower altitude sun latitude near the spring equinox.

At page top was the last subject I worked that was also the most aesthetic, another two column stitch blend. In particular, the usually difficult foreground blue dicks rendered surprisingly well. This now 76 year old senior rambled over maybe 5 miles this day of healthy exercise, mostly off trails, that once again was a key factor in eventually coming across better aesthetic subjects. To do so, wore Levi 505 blue jeans to protect against pushing through brush, my usual sun shield hat with a long back neck flaps, a white, lightweight, long sleeve polyester t-shirt, and robust Zamberlan Vioz GTX hiking boots.

Weary after tromping through a few miles of these landscapes and interested in what conditions were in other serpentine zones, I drove east on SR120/SR49 to the Moccasin Creek junction where it became evident those areas were both drier and too early. Instead of overnighting given I expected success with at least some of the 7 subjects I worked, decided to drive the 125 miles back home for which this day ended about 9pm PDT.

Kite Hill Preserve

Eleven days after my Red Hills work on an uncommon spring day of forecast light breezes on Friday morning April 3, 2025, awoke with the intention of driving somewhere locally that might be productive. After spending a couple hours on my computer unsuccessfully finding anything, I found a report on desertusa dot com for Kite Hill Preserve in Woodside that sounded interesting. On Tuesday I had visited San Francisco Chase Center Arena waterfront areas and on the drive home along I280, noticed some of the nearby serpentine geology areas had some modest flowers though Edgewood County Park looked mediocre. What the heck, it was just a 24 mile half hour drive for $9 worth of gasoline.

I arrived about 10:45am just when a minor breeze was forecast to rise from near dead calm that indeed was the case. Visiting any earlier would not have had value because some species like tidy tips, gilia, and poppies don't open till mid to late morning. This is a really small area I had never visited and it was obvious only locals seem to be aware of it. I was surprised to find typical serpentine species near peak that was probably the previous weekend since it had been dry with warm sunny days. A few people were walking its primitive use trails. Unlike nearby popular Edgewood County Park where walking off trails even a few feet is strictly prohibited, such has not yet been necessary here. It isn't that knowledgeable persons can't walk relatively harmlessly off trails without negative effects but rather the majority of people don't know perrennials from annuals, alien weed grasses from natives, and many will otherwise walk anywhere trampling natives as has happened many times over the last couple decades in places like Walker Canyon in Riverside County.

Later back home, I discovered a most interesting story of how this preserve was the first I've read about that has successfully eliminated most of the hated Eurasian grassland weed species Spanish explorers originally brought with them to feed their domesticated animals. Once let loose, they quickly overwhelmed native western North American species in most areas that in California had once been a vast flowery paradise. Only in a few California geologies of serpentine or alkaline soils do native species still compete. But even in these areas, those weeds tend to colonize. Craig Dremann has done a huge service to California and should be rewarded. I've already notice many other areas have taken notice so may try his restoration strategies that require manpower over several years.

Kite Hill topo

Kite Hill wildflowers reappear following restoration project

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This first modest subject above shows a typical landscape of tidy tips, layia platyglossa, California poppy, eschscholzia californica, blue dicks, dipterostemon capitatus, and a few hidden birdsfoot lotus, lotus corniculatus, amid tall weedy alien grasses. The eastern fence line is I280 freeway property at the hilltop so one can use slopes lower down pointing uphill below knees to eliminate infrastructure within lens frames.

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This next subject oriented northward also includes purple owl's clover, castilleja exserta, tomcat clover, trifolium willdenovii. Have not yet ID's the small white fuzzy species. One can also see the lily leaves of soap plant that bloom late spring. I had to frame my lens low in order to eliminate housing.

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After barely able to capture the above two subjects waiting for calmer moments, my final subject was at the south end where the slope provided some breeze protection but also shows how this sunnier aspect was already pass peak greenery. At frame top is a coast live oak, quercus agrifolia, as I ended this short exploration. Before driving home, I drove to the obscure south end entry into Edgewood County Park for a better look at its mediocre 2025 spring displays. It was quite evident while driving through Woodside with its gorgeous multimillion dollar real estate that given the large amount of trees, shrubs, and grasses surrounding homes, it was one of the most likely SF Bay Area places for a future horrific fall given high dry winds for a wildfire catastrophe. I do hope those residents work to figure out how to prevent such.

NEXT: Page 2 North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve
2025 Trip Chronicles: Contents

David Senesac
email: info@davidsenesac.com
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