Sharpe Park - Sares Head — Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025

The berries were ripe, but I didn't check the box, the robins had them mostly eaten! Madrone berries, what was left, were scattered about the moss, bringing the red and green colors of the season to the hike. We did this backwards from my normal direction, opting to go to Sares Head first. We took the Shelly trail, then cut left up the Fern Forest, which is the newest trail built by WTA and is not on the printed map. It is, however, on the TH kiosk map. Take this one to get to the upper part of Sares Head (Manchin Overlook and a nice new bench. After a tea break we headed back down on the Sares Head to the Sunburst. There's a couple of trails that dead end to some viewpoints, if you find yourself a bit turned around retrace your steps, you want to keep going to the right (north). Cross over a little bridge, pass a bench by the Madrone trail, then continue on Sunburst to intersect the Porpoise Point trail. There are two good stopping points on the Porpoise, the first is a grassy flat area, then climb up along the bluff and there is a trail to a rocky area with nice sitting spots. We chose to have our lunch here and continue along the Porpoise trail to Calamity following that back to the Sares, making a nice 3.5 mile loop with a good variation of up and down. Trails are in good shape, but the rocks and moss combo can get slippery. I love this great little park, and have a bit of nostalgia hiking it, I did some work parties on all of these trails at some point. Loo clean and stocked today