Trail Along Waterwheel Creek

Just like the creek, you won't find this trail on any map either.

This trail is brutally steep, many sections above 50% gradient. Up to the grove of trees I stopped at, I traveled 2100 ft. and gained 700 ft. of elevation or 33% average gradient. It looks to be another 0.25 mile and 300 ft. of climbing to get to the official Waterwheel Creek Trail. If you did this same trip down the Canyon trail, Stevens Creek and Montebello Roads, you're looking at close to 10 miles. Or you could go up the Canyon Trail, then up the Indian Creek Trail and back down Montebello Road which is around 5 miles. So this faint user trail makes an interesting way to efficiently access this area.

Interesting point, after using historic topo maps and the new LIDAR based hillshade maps to find old roads and trails, this one was found using good old fashioned "looking for signs on the ground" technique.

Geologic Analysis Of The Monte Bello Ridge Mountain Study Area paper:
https://fbdroch.com/book/environmental-geologic-analysis-of-the-monte-bello-ridge-mountain-study-area-santa-clara-county-california

From that paper:
"TECTONIC BLOCKS - Large angular to rounded, commonly elliptically shaped masses of relatively hard rocks surrounded by a clay-rich, sheared matrix. Occurs within shear zones and fault gouge. In the shear zones of the Franciscan rocks, these blocks range from "fist size" to masses more than one mile long."

USGS National Map Viewer w/ Hill Shade:
https://apps.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

About the USGS HTMC:
https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past

View/download maps on the TopoView site:
https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/

More to come...
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