Muir Woods

May 2025

This was my third visit to Muir Woods, but the first in my increasingly last-in-first-out photo processing queue. My longest Muir Woods walk by far, as we hiked up to Cardiac Hill via the Dipsea Trail and back down Stapelveldt and Ben Johnson (trail guide).

It is not, in reality, anything like as dark as this under the canopy of the redwoods on a bright May day, but I was wearing dark and red-tinted sunglasses and was keen to recreate the experience by underexposing my photos too.

It’s called Cardiac Hill, because, obviously. We shared it with people running the Stinson Beach marathon:

View from Cardiac Hill

If you ascend Dipsea and then go down Stapelveldt / Ben Johnson as we did, you have to do the ascent mostly in the sun, but then you get to do the return in the shade:

Moss, Muir Woods Sunlit redwoods, Muir Woods Redwood canopy, Muir Woods Fern uncoiling Forest floor, Muir Woods Sunlight, Redwood Creek, Muir Woods

All photos.

Old Croton Aqueduct Trail

October 2019

Knowing I was coming up on photos of New York really did a number on my photo processing lo these 18 months.

This one was a trudge, 6km or so from Irvington to Dobbs Ferry. I had hoped to do it on the following day but there was rain forecast (in fact the remanents of Tropical Storm Olga) which saw me taking refuge in the Musuem of Natural History, trudging through there instead.

Weekends are always when the jetlag smashes down. Someday I will have the chance to re-learn that.

It’s a pretty trudge though!

Tracks, Marble Hill Station Old Croton Aqueduct Trail, Irvington Old Croton Aqueduct Trail Crawling roots, Old Croton Aqueduct Trail Autumn living on the Hudson

All photos.