St. Joseph's Hill Open Space Preserve 2015-02-16

This President’s Day holiday hike had two special companions – my wife Jaya and my niece Abhinaya. I’d identified St. Joseph’s Hill Open Space Preserve to provide us with a rousing workout without being very difficult. We parked in downtown Los Gatos in Lot 6 on W. Main St. and walked for few minutes to the trail head located at Maple Place & E. Main. St. I was here a few days ago when I did the second part of the Los Gatos Creek Trail hike.

Walking down from Maple Place, bear left to stay on Flume Trail. The right fork is the Los Gatos Creek Trail. 

While both trails border the creek, Flume Trail is shaded, rugged, narrow, and hilly. Little more than a mile of this hike will find you at Novitiate Park with a large grass expanse. Flume Trail joins the Jones Trail at this point. Jones Trail will lead you all the way to the Lexington Reservoir, which is what we intended to do.

Novitiate Park

Continue south on Jones Trail, which will be somewhat wider than the Flume Trail. About 1½ miles in, you’ll see Novitiate Trail on your left. We decided to explore St. Joseph's Hill on our way back and continued towards the reservoir. About 2 miles in, you will come upon a steep descent to Alma Bridge Road and the Lexington Reservoir.

Lexington Reservoir

Much bigger than Vasona, Lexington Reservoir was only 45% full. That didn’t stop a lab from swimming in the lake and fetching the ball his master was throwing for him. After his excursions in our previous hike, Apollo didn’t get a chance to muddy himself today!

Where we hiked today also marks the starting point for two more trails that are part of the Sierra Azul Open Preserve (Priest Rock and Limekiln trails). We’ll probably be back in this area again!

Breather at the hill top

Retracing our steps on Jones Trail, we decided to check out St. Joseph’s Hill and took the Novitiate Trail. There are several trails in this section – Novitiate, Manzanita, Range, Brothers Bypass, and Serpentine. They are also well marked so you can pick and choose the ones as you make your way up to the hilltop vista point. Our detour into this section was probably a little more than 2.5 miles, but we certainly got some fantastic views of both Lexington Reservoir and South Bay towns from the vista point. These trails are hilly and involve climbing, but they are not very difficult.

The holiday saw plenty of mountain bikers out on these trails. Sharing the narrow and rugged trails with cyclists meant paying close attention to the traffic around you. I retraced my path all the way down Flume Trail to downtown Los Gatos. Continuing on Jones Trail instead of Flume Trail would lead you to the end of Jones Road and was slightly shorter. Jaya and Abhi took the shorter route, while Apollo and I jogged our way back to the trail head by Maple Pl.

Overall, this 7+ mile hike involved ascending about 1000 feet. With the extensive shade, this would be a perfect trail to hike on a hot day. 

If you choose to start your hike from downtown Los Gatos, when you finish the hike, you can treat yourself to some nice beverage in one of the plentiful restaurants there.

More pictures from the hike.

Update 2016-03-23

Apollo and I repeated this hike, this time with my daughter Sanjana on what turned out to be a nice spring day. We essentially took the same path that we did earlier: started from the trail head at E Main St & Maple Pl, took the Flume trail, passed by Novitiate Park to enter St. Joseph's Hill Preserve, continued on Jones Trail to reach Lexington Reservoir at Alma Bridge Rd.

At 65% of capacity, the reservoir was in a much better shape today. On the way back, we turned right by Novitiate trail, looped around Manzanita trail and stopping by St. Joseph's Hill (1253 ft.) The views from the hilltop were as impressive as ever. 

Walking by Flume trail that runs parallel to Los Gatos Creek, we were lucky to spot a Great Blue Heron wading through the waters of the creek. Something I had only mentioned in passing before, this hike involves climbing about 1100 feet with a slightly steep grade in couple of sections.

Few more pictures from the second hike.
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