Noticing lxxvii - Fremont Peak State Park

Our tradition on New Year's Day is to go for a hike—preferably someplace new. Today we chose Fremont Peak State Park, in part because it has a few geocaches, and we "needed" to find one today (for a "souvenir," called Welcome 2020—utterly silly, but we play along), in part because it's not too terribly far away (though the 11-mile road up to the top is very twisty, turny, and narrow, so although it may be closer than Santa Cruz as the crow flies, I'm not sure where it stands timewise), in part because we hadn't been to Fremont Peak in donkeys' years.

In fact, I believe we've only been to the top twice: once when we first moved here, so back around 1990; we spent the night in a tent, with our first cat, the beloved—and intrepid—Tisiphone, who brought us rodent treats in the night. The second time was with a few friends on bicycles. We actually rode up the twisty, turny, narrow—and did I mention decidedly upward?—county road on our bicycles. And made it! We were younger then, and stronger. On the way down, which I'd been looking forward to—wheeeeeee!—my seat broke: came right off. Which made sitting down, well, impossible. On the upside, it didn't break on the ride up, when I really needed to sit. Then again, 11 miles (or however many: it may have broken toward the end of the trip—let's hope so!) standing on your pedals is not something I ever want to do again.

So no, it had been maybe two decades since we'd ventured up to Fremont Peak. It was time!

And it was a lovely day for some hiking, and views.

Undated portrait by
George Peter Alexander Healy

The park is named for John Charles Frémont (1813–1890), an American explorer, military officer, and politician. (The peak is traditionally known as Gavilan, or Hawk, Peak.) In February 1846, as a captain in the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, Frémont and 60 armed surveyors climbed the 3,173-foot mountain overlooking Mission San Juan Bautista to assess its military value. In response to the threat, the local Mexican authority, General José Castro, ordered Frémont and his men to leave California. The local U.S. consul in Monterey, Thomas Larkin, agreed that they should leave. In defiance, Frémont built a small stockade and erected a U.S. flag on one of the hilltops near the peak. Castro massed some of his forces. One night, the wind rose and knocked the flag down—which Frémont (perhaps to save face) interpreted as an omen, and off he scuttled.

Also undated

That is just one incident in a long, long story of expeditioning, soldiering, surveying, and generally working hard to expand the U.S. territories. A few years after that incident—and after California joined the United States in August 1846—Frémont became one of the first two U.S. senators from California, and later still, in 1856, he ran for president as the first candidate of the brand-new Republican Party. He lost to James Buchanan. And oh, there's so much more, including service in the Civil War, another run for president on a different ticket, and eventually territorial governor of Arizona. A very colorful life indeed. (You can read more about him in Wikipedia.)

In any case, today the state park, established in 1936 with 188 acres, is the site of a couple of small campgrounds, some modest hiking trails, an observatory with a 30-inch f/4.8 Newtonian "Challenger" telescope, and local broadcast (TV and radio) antennas.

We found six caches, and did not find one; also learned a lot of very interesting geology via three earth caches—about barite, which was briefly mined here (1916–20); about limestone and dolomite; and how geology—in this case, underlying granite vs. limestone—impacts plant communities.

Here are a few photos I took, SOOC. Click on them to view large on black.

Our first caching stop

One of the earth caches invited us to differentiate
limestone/marble from dolomite: this is the former,
though it was often tricky to distinguish the dolomite,
which is more uniformly gray and "pocked"—
sometimes the "pocking" seemed linear, which reminded us
of layers, which are a hallmark of limestone.

Fremont Peak itself: a magnet for people wanting a
short walk and a stellar view

The clouds were staying on the southern slope,
not spilling over

I'm thinking this is dolomite

View from the peak down on the antennas

A California buckeye (Aesculus californica), just
starting to show signs of budding; in another month or so
this tree will be bursting with brilliant green

The transition from granite to limestone, and from
chaparral/manzanita to oak/pine woodland

Goodbye, Fremont Peak: we may not be back to see you
again before another twenty years have passed . . .
but who knows?