Ravenswood is linchpin for 80mile trail
The prospect of being able to ride a road bike all day on the Bay Trail is one of the most exciting new recreation prospects in the Bay Area.
That chance is a giant step closer this week with the reopening of the Ravenswood Open Space Preserve on Saturday. With it comes the news that the missing link here for the Bay Trail will be completed for access by summer, when 80 continuous miles will be available along South San Francisco Bay.
Ravenswood is located at Cooley Landing on the shore of the South Bay just south of the Dumbarton Bridge. It provides access to marshlands that are linked to national refuge wetlands to the north and the Bayland Nature Preserve in Palo Alto and beyond to Sunnyvale Baylands.
It was closed in midAugust for construction, and last week, the Midpeninsula Open Space District announced “excellent progress” on the project.
At the same time, another adjacent project, to convert a 300acre salt pond to a tidal marsh wetland, promises to attract shorebirds and waterfowl, both resident and migratory.
The Ravenswood Preserve spans 376 areas with short trails, viewing decks, a learning center and a gap in the Bay Trail so close to being linked. The vision of being able to ride out all day here on the Bay Trail is so exciting that my wife, Denese, and I plan to be among the first to hit the trail on our bikes.
When you drive in there on Bay Road, you arrive at parking at the foot of the Cooley Landing Education Center. Those familiar with the Ravenswood Open Space Preserve will remember the days when the access road was often a mucky mess in winter, but now is paved all the way in.
When you get there
After parking, the best suggestion is walk back on Bay Road for 0.2 of a mile. On your right, you’ll see a bridge that leads over a small slough to the Bay Trail. Walk over the bridge and you’ll reach a Tjunction with the Bay Trail. A right turn leads about 200 feet to a viewing deck, a mustdo. The walk is short, flat and easy.
Your reward is a sweeping view across the marsh, beyond to the South Bay and Dumbarton Bridge. On crystal days between storms in winter, you can see across to the ridgeline of the East Bay hills and beyond to towering Mount Diablo 50 miles away. To the south, the view leads across to Milpitas, Mission Peak and Mount Hamilton.
You then can turn and walk on the Bay Trail back to the junction, and continue north for 1.2 miles (it curves to the right) to another observation deck set near the shore of the South Bay.
You will be surrounded by miles of wetland marsh up and down the western shore of the South Bay.
Great egrets and snowy egrets, along with blue herons, and the inevitable coot, seem to be yearround residents. At low tides, sandpipers and willets are common on the mudflats. But this is a place where migratory shorebirds and ducks come and go throughout the year, and often peak from January through April. One spring, I remember encountering a surprise flock of avocets.
The future
With 80 miles of continuous trail and saltpond restoration on the books, the Bay Trail on the South Bay will provide a spectacular cycling destination for anybody across the region.
For access, the work at Ravenswood includes new redwood boardwalks and bridge over wetlands and sloughs, and a resurfaced asphalt multiuse trail between University and Bay Road.
For shorebirds, hightide islands where the birds can take refuge are being created in the marsh. Restoration seeding is taking place along the Bay Trail, as well as planting vegetation in the tidal zone.
Simultaneously, the conversion of salt ponds to wetlands will provide new habitat.
The passage of the Measure AA parcel tax, approved by Bay Area voters in 2016, is paying for the conversion of Ravenswood R4, a salt pond, to become wildlife habitat. As part of the project, holes will be knocked in the levees that devastated tidal wetlands, one of nine projects approved for funding in the first round of allocations.