Hubby was in charge of finding a new place to hike for the weekend. He came up with Billy's Hill to Cortina Ridge and found it on yolohiker.org. It turned out to be an awesome choice. Let's just say I was pleasantly surprised. It came with steep climbs and amazing views.
We had checked the weather and it was looking good. Billy's Hill is located in Colusa County. From Davis it is about an hour and 15 minute drive. You get there by taking Highway 16 through the Capay valley. There are no signs at the parking area. The parking area is between mile marker 6.00 and 5.84. There are also no bathrooms so plan accordingly. No worries about parking spots because we were the only ones there.
The parking area is decent sized and could probably fit a bunch of cars depending on how people park.
You have to cross the street to get to Billy's Hill where there is a gate. It was locked but you can go to the right where there is an opening, or if you can fit, just squeeze through. According to yolohiker.org it is public land and anyone is allowed to hike there.
We weren't quite sure where to go but there is a faint trail and it heads up to what was an old fire road at one time. Hiking up was pretty steep at and even with the steepness the kiddos did great.
After about 45 minutes of hiking up we stopped for lunch. Our lunch spot had great views.
Hiking up all throughout the trail were animal tracks. We figured they were deer or elk. Turns out there is a huge elk community in Cache creek. We did not see them but it was neat to see all of their tracks.
It took us about an hour and 20 minutes to get up to Billy's hill with the kiddos. This is the clearing where we took a short break.
The views were amazing! You get awesome 360 degree views.
We took a short break and continued on as we wanted to get to Cortina Ridge.
I couldn't stop taking pictures because the mountains looked so beautiful.
At this point 6 year old was not so motivated to keep on going so I had to encourage him a bit more (promising him a treat at the end of the hike helped). :) If you look closely you can see Hubby and 4 year old out front. 4 year old has a red shirt on.
Hubby and I made it to the ridge, it was a steep climb up (left the kiddos at a safe place at the bottom) and I snapped this shot quickly before heading back down.
Going down was so much easier. The kiddos, especially 6 year old liked going down better than going up. He ended up running when he could, but there were very steep parts that you need to go down slowly.
It was so steep that 4 year old ended up falling at one point into a somersault. So glad he did not hurt himself but he did learn that he needed to be more careful.
Overall it was an awesome hike and I definitely recommend this one to others! I'm estimating we did about 4 miles or so total. I'm estimating because I started my Garmin watch late and forgot to turn it off, so it came out to 6 miles on my watch but that included part of us driving back towards home on the highway. I do remember seeing the watch at around 4 miles when we were almost down to the car, so let's go with that.
Anyway, it is my favorite hike so far in the area. So great of a hike that I had to do a jump pic. If you see a jump pic in any of my trip reports, it means it was an amazing hike. :)
Have a great day!
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