Recreation
Most visitors at Coe Park hike or mountain bike on the numerous trails within the park. There are about 200 miles (320 km) of dirt roads and trails in the park. Some of the dirt roads are wide and designed well, some are narrow and rutted, and some are so overgrown as to be easily missed. Recently constructed single-track trails are usually maintained, and, in general, the closer one is to Coe Headquarters, the more such trails there are. More remote trails are often just old jeep roads overgrown to a single-track width; others were created solely by repeated use, especially by equestrians. These were often made with insufficient forethought and often suffer moderate to severe erosion problems, or may be overgrown and difficult to follow much of the year.
Henry Coe also provides exceptional backpacking opportunities. The park is so large and there are so many roads and trails, that one could plan a route covering ten miles per day, at a different campsite each night, and go two weeks without ever using the same trail or dirt road. Coe is the only park in the San Francisco Bay Area where this is possible. Permits are required, but are usually easy to obtain, except on busy spring weekends.
The park is considered mountain bike friendly, since there are only a few miles of trails off limits to them (though this includes the whole of Orestimba Wilderness, but this is too far away for most bicyclists to reach on a day ride). It is not unusual for as much as half of park visitors on a given day to be mountain bicyclists, though this is normally closer to 30%. Equestrians also make use of the trails, though they account for less than 1% of all visitors. As in all state parks, hunting is prohibited, but fishing is allowed. Motorized vehicles are prohibited in the backcountry; exceptions are law enforcement or maintenance staff, and a few dirt roads are designated rights-of-way for neighboring property owners and their guests.
Spring is the most popular time to visit the park, with its moderate weather, green hillsides dotted with colorful wildflowers, and flowing creeks. Summer is usually too hot and dry for most people to enjoy the area, though the nighttime weather is pleasant and the sky usually clear for star-gazing. Fall, from about mid-October through early November, is also a pleasant time to visit. There are also mild days between rainstorms in winter at Coe. Infrequent snowfall is light and usually persists for just a few days. On rare occasions, creeks can be frozen over in winter.
The most common danger faced by visitors is exhaustion from attempting to hike or ride too many steep trails in too little time, or with too little water or food. Additionally, there are many ticks of several different species (though Lyme disease is rare in the area), as well as a few venomous rattlesnakes.
Read more about this topic: Henry W. Coe State Park
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