The Strange Lure of Mt. Umunhum or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love (Maybe Like) the Trail

By Barbara Zirl

Mt. Umunhum is calling, sending me signals like some Bali Ha’i of Silicon Valley. That may even be true. The enigma cube on the mountain top was once a Cold War era radar tower, manned by a brigade of engineers, monitoring the skies for potential air threats from Russia. The radio waves went out in the atmosphere and into space. Maybe now they’re returning, bouncing back like those signals they send out seeking intelligent life on other planets.

You can see the odd structure from everywhere in the valley. When I run along the Los Alamitos Creek Trail near where live in south San Jose, I can see Mt. Umunhum in the clouds. The mountain is wearing a pill box hat. It looks ridiculous, tiny in contrast to the expanse that fills up the horizon and forms the foothills. Maybe it’s a fascinator of a sort the British ladies wear to royal weddings or christenings or horse races at Ascot. This one is simple: plain, gray, no frills perched some 3,489 feet up in the sky.

Since I arrived in San Jose last summer – essentially landing on another planet from my home base in New Jersey – I’ve wondered about it. What’s up there? How do you get to it? Someone mentions a hike.

Until now, I’ve stuck to the paved creek trails like Los Alamitos, Calero, Los Gatos, Coyote and Guadalupe and hilly roads in Evergreen that remind me of home. In my running life, I’ve covered miles and miles of pavement. I’ve run on flat roads and mixed it up with steep hills, unavoidable in northern New Jersey. The roads changed with the seasons: sizzling tar in the humid summers; decorated with blooming trees and flowers in spring; shaded with fall colors and then covered in fallen leaves; or blanketed with snow and then cleared by the plows in winter. Since 1999, when I began running long distances, I started logging my miles, so I have measurable, empirical evidence. I ran an average of 2,500 miles a year for 20 years. That’s 50,000 miles -- all on the roads.

One trip around the earth is 24,901 miles, so I’ve gone twice around the planet. If you redeemed 50,000 frequent flier miles, you’d get an upgraded round-trip ticket. If I put 50,000 miles on my Honda Civic it would be time to replace all the fluids, filters and belts, check the suspension and get a new set of tires! I’ve gone through more than 100 pairs of running shoes. (I promise I’ve donated the used ones.) 50,000 miles of training got me through 30 marathons, numerous half marathons, 15Ks, 10Ks, 8Ks, 5ks. Think about this: at 100 calories per mile, minimum, I’ve burned 5,000,000 calories while running. That’s a lot of Stan’s donuts. If you count steps (roughly 2,250 steps to a mile) it’s 112,500,000 steps! 50,000 miles -- all on asphalt and not one toe on the dirt.

What would it take to get me out on a trail? Will trail running make me a better roadrunner? Do trail runners switch back and forth to run on roads again?

In my hometown, where I’d lived my whole life, I’d run a regular route most days, varied by length and supplemented with other routes to include more hilly terrain. That first step onto Belmont Drive in Livingston, N.J. always felt like home – music in my ears, the hill before me, a familiar climb. If you’ve heard me wax poetic for even a few seconds about running in New Jersey, you know I love running hills. My regular training routes included roads named Edgemere, where the high school cross country team did hill repeats; Hillside and Cliffside with rolling hills and steep grades that mimicked the Boston Marathon’s Newton Hills; streets named Highland, Upper Mountain, North and South Mountain in Montclair, where I did long runs for a change of scenery.

While I trained mostly on my own, running at my own pace, enveloping myself in the music and relishing the time to just think, I did belong to a running club located in a nearby town. But I participated infrequently in the group running activities, mostly because the other runners were too fast for me and I felt there was a divide, with high school-like cliques: the road runners; the trail runners; the ultra runners; the tri-athletes.

Arriving in California alone, the most logical way to meet people and feel less stranded was to seek out a running group full of like-minded fitness enthusiasts. Too Legit Fitness was the remedy. Right away, I felt connected to a tribe. Coach B’s way of treating the group like a giant team with everyone rooting for each other and never leaving anyone behind, creates a warm, diverse community – a fitness family happily inviting me to a seat at their potluck picnic. Have a sip of this 10K. Taste my daily creek run, my secret recipe for weight loss. Try my favorite half. Take a big bite of my prize winning marathon. Eat up this savory ultra. Just for you, I’ve opened up a fresh and delicious trail. Here, give it a try.

One Saturday morning at the end of December, the team run is at Santa Teresa County Park in Almaden Valley. I dig out the one pair of trail shoes I own that I wore in New Jersey winters to run on snow-packed and icy roads. I’m sure I’ll need some traction on this terrain, but I don’t know what to expect. We park at a nearby fitness center, do a warm up in the parking lot and run to the park entrance about a half mile down the road. There’s a little farm area at the trailhead, with several chickens in an outdoor coop. The packed dirt trail immediately goes uphill. It’s steep – already a 10 percent or maybe 15 percent grade that makes me walk instead of run. Coach B leads the way through the winding trail as it switches back and forth up the mountain. There are places where it’s pure hiking and climbing over boulders. We’re ascending higher and higher up the mountain. Here it’s not really runnable. I’m at the back of the group, certainly the slowest and most tentative – a neophyte trail runner trying not to grumble with the increasing challenge and perceived danger.

At the highest point, we take in the view of the valley below and the foothills all around us. The downhill sections are steep also and I’m afraid to let loose with too much speed. The trail is soft following some recent rains and my trail shoes are heavy with wet mud. I’m trying to avoid sinking my feet into the dirt and seek out the grassy sides of the trail. But those parts are just as wet, even at the edges. I walk carefully down the steep, soggy path, afraid I’ll twist an ankle if I try to run it. The 10-mile run/hike/climb takes hours. Finally, we return to roost with the chickens and paved road leading back to our cars. I’ve survived my first trail run – barely. My left knee aches and my shoes are caked in dirt. I don’t know if I’ll tackle this again and I’m not sure it was fun or why people like doing this. I leave my muddy sneakers outside my front door to dry out.

There’s the surprise trail run in February, snuck into a 14-mile hill training route in Evergreen. We start out easily enough running along the familiar winding paved roads, follow an increasingly challenging route of rolling hills and suddenly we stop at a fence next to Evergreen College on Yerba Buena Road. We’re at Montgomery Hill Park. Later, once we’ve powered up the hill to the summit, trekking through squishy mud and rutted grass and we stop to catch our breath, I’ll learn that this spot is a memorial to an aviation pioneer and glider pilot who took his last test flight here. I’m wearing an old pair of road shoes since it’s been raining recently and I wasn’t expecting to be on a trail. We run down, down, down along a twisting soupy path. I’m scared to run it and instead walk through the mud. The more experienced trail runners fly down the hill, seeming to ignore the instability of the ground and the slip-and-slide chute.

I search for a proper pair of trail shoes, finding a good deal on a previous year’s model of Brooks at REI and I get a hydration pack so I’m prepared for the next time – if there is a next time.

I marvel as other runners share their trail running experiences at places with exotic-sounding names: Mt. Diablo, Rancho San Antonio, Quicksilver, Alum Rock, Castle Rock, Mission Peak. They’re running in the Marin headlands, the Santa Cruz mountains, Calero Reservoir county park, Mount Madonna -- documenting their workouts with photos and videos of mountains, rocks, stone steps, reservoirs, waterfalls, creeks and rivers running through it, redwoods and forests and wildlife encounters. That piece of information alone makes me nervous. Rancho was closed temporarily because a family of mountain lions settled in for the summer. A woman almost got charged by a bear on her backpack hike. Someone leapt over a rattlesnake at Coyote Creek. Coach B posts a photo of the enormous tarantula he spotted one day at the Stanford Dish trail. These trails are not a walk in the park or a stroll through the woods: they wind up the sides of mountains. I’m not afraid of hills – just bugs! Despite my fears, I’ve made a pact with myself to stay open to new experiences and not jump to “no” before giving the trails another try.

I’ve been training for the extremely hilly San Francisco Marathon, running up and down similar hills since March, and am nearing the peak of my training schedule three weeks out before the race. The San Francisco race has my name on it, with its 1,500 ft. elevation gain of steep climbs. I ran 20 miles on a Saturday and am at the taper point where I will cut back on my miles to prepare for race day. A Too Legit member I don’t know has planned a hike at Mt. Umunhum for the next day, Sunday, and I’m intrigued. It’s a hike, not a run and I can take it at my own pace. It will give me some additional hill work before the race. Plus here’s the perfect opportunity to uncover the mystery of Mt. Umunhum. Victoria tells me she’s been eager to do the hike since the parks department restored the trails in 2017, so we both sign up to go.

The first page I come to on the Mt. Umunhum website lists everything I’m afraid of. Beware of mountain lions, ticks, poison oak and rattlesnakes. My encounters with snakes have been limited to watching my nephews pet a boa constructor at a birthday party at Happy Hollow Zoo during one of my early visits to this area; reading The Little Prince as a kid and recalling Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s description of the boa constrictor eating an elephant – a drawing that looks like a hat to grown-ups; a garter snake slithering by my lawn chair in the backyard of my old house in New Jersey; and that time I went downstairs to feed my cats and discovered something coiled up underneath the baseboard heater near their food bowls.

I call out up the stairs, “Hey mom, come look at this.” I know it’s a snake and I just stare at it, hoping it won’t attack. She comes down to the family room, takes a look and says, “Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s dead!” Ha! I get an old pair of barbeque tongs from the garage, a pair of work gloves and a plastic trash bag. The cats are watching. I’m Indiana Jones approaching the coil, tongs at the ready, trash bag open. My thought is, I will grab it all coiled up and quickly put in the bag. Yeah. It isn’t dead. As soon as I touch it with the tongs, the snake unrolls itself, wildly squirming. The cats jump up with all four paws at once and hit the ceiling. I’m trying not to panic as I dump the monster in the bag, knot the end and rush out to the large trash can in the garage. I’ve traded the leather bag of sand for the gold idol and have outrun the boulder unleashed when I made the switch. Two seconds later, I re-consider my inhumane approach, go back to the garage, retrieve the bag from the can and take the poor intruder snake outside and release it into the backyard. Run free little snake!

Will I encounter rattlesnakes on Mt. Umunhum?

I learn that Mt. Umunhum is the fourth highest peak in the Santa Cruz Mountain range and is part of the Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve. We meet the hike organizer at the parking lot at the base of the mountain. His plan is for the group to drive a few cars up to the top, take a car back down. Then, hike the 8-mile route to the top and drive back. Victoria and I decide to drive to mid-way to the Bald Mountain parking area and hike the 3.7 mile route up and back. It’s a hike, not a car ride! The 7.4 miles seems manageable and we’re ready. I’ve got on my new trail shoes with high socks to keep the bugs away, a pack holding water and snacks, a hat (I never wear them), sun glasses, shorts, and a long-sleeve shirt over a sleeveless top. I’m the cover of the Trails for Dummies handbook. We set out at 6:30 a.m. It’s a comfortably cool morning. There’s a mist all around us and the mountain top is covered in clouds.

The trail is packed dirt, flat, though it winds around the mountain ascending gradually, so it’s not steep, but you feel the altitude change as you climb. It cuts through a canopy of interesting trees with striking dark red bark that’s peeling off to reveal olive green underneath. Victoria tells me they’re called refrigerator trees because they’re cool to the touch. We touch them until we spy some ants crawling out from under a piece of the loose bark. The trees are actually the Pacific Madrone. On the way up, the trail hugs the mountain side. To my right is a cliff and you wouldn’t want to fall and slide down. Only one spot we come to has mud where we can’t step around and have to tip toe through. The way up takes about an hour and a half. With each turn, we get nearer and nearer to the box that looks like a hat that could even be a snake eating an elephant. We reach the summit where a set of stairs leads to the restored park area. And there sits the famous cube. Well, it’s not a hat! It’s just a giant box. That’s it. A big concrete box. The 8 ½ story tower used to have a satellite dish on top, but that’s gone. You can’t go inside anymore and it’s surrounded by a safety fence since pieces of cement are falling off the building.

The tower was part of Almaden Air Force Station, a radar surveillance post which operated from 1958 to 1970. Military families lived up there year-round. There were homes and schools, a community center with a pool, shops and other amenities to keep the rather isolated residents occupied and cared for. In 2017, the Mid-peninsula Regional Open Space District cleaned up hazardous materials, removed crumbling structures and restored trail access to the summit for hikers and bike riders.

There’s a ceremonial space honoring the Ohlone, the Native American people of northern California who were the original inhabitants of the region, remnants of the military settlement, displays with historical information and picnic areas. From the summit, you can see expansive views from the Pacific all the way to Monterey. We take pictures, eat some snacks, and head back down.

Nearly at the bottom, off to the right side of the trail where it goes down the ravine, we spot an abandoned vehicle that we didn’t notice on the climb up. It’s an old, rusty VW Beetle that must have run off the road above us long ago, its ill-fated driver and passengers meeting a terrible end. Victoria climbs down closer to have a better view and take some pics. Our successful hike comes to an end and we have not come across any wildlife, snakes or bugs except that Beetle. And we’ve answered the call of Mt. Um.

About a month later, it’s August, and I am running at Quicksilver Park for the first time. Kate has organized the trail run for a Sunday morning at 7:00 a.m. and, after Felicia has signed up to go, I have agreed to join as well. The day before, I’d run a long 13-mile training run on a paved trail at Los Gatos Creek and thought a short, organized trail run would be a good introduction. The 6-mile distance would be manageable and it would be a run – not some ultra trail race. We arrive at the trailhead at the end of a residential street. The rest of our morning group arrives and we take a photo before we set off. There are seven of us on the trail.

The entrance is unassuming, marked only by a heavy metal barrier – not even a complete gate, really. There aren’t any signs except for an 8x11 computer-printed color photo with a hand- written note looking for a man gone missing, and a yellow caution sign with a picture of a rattlesnake. On the photo I took of the trail entrance it says Almaden Quicksilver Hike, 17571 McAbee Road, San Jose. There are a few more fence posts along the trail entrance – just wood posts with some wire strung through them. This is the only paved part of the trail.

The idea of running here makes me nervous. The rattlesnake sign. The possibility of bumping into wild boar or bobcats or mountain lions or coyotes, oh my. Only a week earlier, my ambitious early morning hill run in the Evergreen section of San Jose had me panicked over an encounter with wildlife of a sort. It was humid and warm even at 6:15 am. I made it to the two mile mark on the path along Silver Creek Valley Road, trying to power up the hills when suddenly I saw something ahead of me. I got scared and stopped. The shapes in the low light were playing tricks on my eyes. Is that a coyote? Is that triangular black thing moving? It can’t be a deer on this trail - I’ve never seen any here before. What if it’s a bear? I took a few cautious steps. Stopped. A few more. It didn’t seem to be moving. Wait – did it turn its head? I inched a few steps closer, took out my phone and zoomed in with the camera, but I still couldn’t tell what I was looking at. Bravely, as I got just a bit closer, the object wasn’t as big as I thought (like you see in your side view mirror). OK. It’s not alive. So… it’s a small, dirty, black canvas back-pack propped against a short pipe sticking out of the ground. I’d spent ten minutes staring down litter, not a coyote or a bear. It wasn’t a good enough excuse to stop my run or turn back, so I ran another half mile. But then I decided to retreat before the road went down a steep hill and I’d only have to climb back up. I ran the 2 ½ miles to my car, re-passing the killer back-pack and called it a draw.

This morning, I’ve got on my new trail shoes (worn once before for the Mt. Um hike) and the small pack to hold my water, some chewable electrolytes and my phone so I can keep my hands free. Our goal is about 6 miles. We are running on the Mine Hill Trail that makes a loop, starting at the McAbee Road entrance. Almaden Quicksilver County Park covers more than 4,000 acres of rolling grassy hills with more than 30 miles of trails that wind around the mountain and range in elevation from 400 ft. to more than 1,700 ft.

We run up the steep trail, walking when it’s too hard to run. A few miles in, we find Jimmy and his dog (they’d started out earlier.) We continue on to the 3 mile point, passing the Guadalupe Reservoir Dam. We reach our goal distance, take a photo and turn around for the trip back. I’m able to run most of it, though still cautious on the gravel and rocky areas.

On the road, the challenge is maintaining a steady effort powering up a hill as it gains elevation and not over-running it on the way down. You’re aware of your footing but focus more on your running form even if your pace slows. On the trail, you face technical challenges: packed dirt with gravel on top; tree roots; rocks creating hazards and obstacles; uneven surfaces; soft, wet, muddy patches – any of which could catch an ankle by surprise.

I’m inspired and rather dumbfounded at fellow runners taking on marathons, 50K, 100K, 50 miles, 100 miles – racing on this terrain, guided only by headlamps, color ribbons on trees as mile markers, finding aid stations nestled in the woods, and running these courses in the dark for as much as 24 hours.

We return to our starting point, 6.0 miles round-trip in an hour and 24 minutes. We’ve covered 3 of Quicksilver’s 30 miles of trails so there’s plenty more to explore. My trail shoes are covered in dust and my body in sweat. I did not encounter any venomous snakes, or vicious wildlife on this trail run. We head back to our cars. It’s only 8:30 in the morning.

I haven’t exactly found peace or Zen in my limited trail running experiences. I’m still trying to appreciate the beauty of these undisturbed nature preserves, putting aside my fears enough to enjoy the moment. I’m not going to retire my road shoes for the trail ones just yet. But I discovered that Clorox wipes did the trick for cleaning off the dust on my Brooks Calderas. They’re good as new and ready for the next.

Barbara Zirl

September 9, 2019