Every Trail Tells a Story
Robert Louis Stevenson State Park
You can see the imposing mountain towering above the wineries. Mt. Saint Helena is a landmark, a wild backdrop behind the neat, cultivated vineyards of Napa Valley.
Best view of the wine country is from the top of 4,343-foot Mt. Saint Helena, reached by a five mile trail that winds through stands of knobcone pine to deliver summit panoramas of not only Napa Valley but the High Sierra and San Francisco Bay as well.
Most of the summit and broad shoulders of Mt. Saint Helena are protected by Robert Louis Stevenson State Park. Stevenson, best remembered for his imaginative novels, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Treasure Island, honeymooned in a cabin tucked in one of Mt. Saint Helena’s ravines in the summer of 1880.
Today you can take a short (one mile) hike into California literary history by joining the trail leading to the secluded site of the Stevensons’ honeymoon. Wrote Stevenson: “At sunrise, and again later at night, the scent of sweet bays filled the canyon.” A memorial in the form of an open book commemorates the author’s stay on the mountain and marks the site of his cabin. (Learn more about the author at the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum in St. Helena.)
Stevenson Memorial Trail is particularly enjoyable for the first interesting mile as it winds through the forest to the memorial. The next four miles of trail-a well-graded fire road leading to the summit-are frankly a bit monotonous; however, the grand vistas, becoming better and better as you climb, more than compensate.
Robert Louis Stevenson State Park is located off Highway 29, eight miles from Calistoga, California, with the main parking area and trailhead situated at 4625 or 4824 Lake County Highway. You’ll find parking turnouts on both sides of the highway. The trail departs from the west side.
Just above the parking lot is a picnic area. During Stevenson’s day, a stage stop and the Toll House Hotel were located here. Signed Stevenson Memorial Trail switchbacks up a shady slope forested with oak, madrone, bay and Douglas fir. A pleasant mile’s walk brings you face-to-face with the granite Stevenson memorial, itself something of a historical curiosity, having been erected by “The Club Women of Napa County” in 1911.
To continue to the peak, scramble up a badly eroded hundred-yard-long stretch of trail to the fire road and turn left. The road soon brings you to a hairpin turn and the first grand view en route. You can admire part of the Napa Valley and surrounding ridges, San Francisco high-rises, as well as two distinct and aptly named nearby peaks: Turk’s Head to the west and Red Hill to the south.
The road continues climbing moderately, but doggedly, up the mountain. Wind-battered, but unbowed, knobcone pine dot the middle slopes of Mt. Saint Helena. Three miles from the trailhead, you’ll pass under some power lines, and another half mile’s travel brings you to a junction with a spur trail leading 0.4 mile to Mt. Saint Helena’s South Peak.
A half mile from the summit, the road passes through a forest of sugar pine and Douglas fir, then begins the final climb to the peak. Various transmitters, communication facilities and a fire lookout clutter the summit, but don’t block the view. Vistas include the Sonoma County coast to the west, Santa Rosa due south, San Francisco and the Bay to the southwest, the High Sierra north of Yosemite to the east. On the clearest of days, you might be able to glimpse Mt. Shasta, nearly 200 miles to the northeast.