Download: Six Sigma Winery Hike!
Back in April, our local Audubon chapter, Redbud Audubon, offered a field trip at Six Sigma Ranch, Vineyard, and Winery located at 13372 Spruce Grove Road. What’s not to love about Six Sigma with its wine, history, super fabulous Pinzgauer tours. Now, they offer glamping at Huttopia! But this was a hike on one of Six Sigma’s trails led by an experienced birder. It turned out to be a bit crowded that day, but fun nonetheless.
It’s always a treat to meet up with owner Kaj Ahlmann to talk about wine and the many goings-on that occur regularly at the multi-tasking winery. He and his family love being stewards of this place on Earth and sharing nature with their neighbors. And what a place to share during the reassuring spring month we visited, when all was dyed green again!
After you sign in at the tasting room, you have a choice of hiking trails thoughtfully integrated into the 4,300-acre ranch. If mountain biking is your thing, just check in with the winery to learn of their rustic network of mountain biking trails. Their website suggests that if you would like to ride the trails, you can join their Wine Club or Pasture Club or become a coach for a High School mountain biking team.
They also emphasize hiking and biking with common sense. In order to do so, select a trail that is in your comfort and safety level, bring water, and watch for the usual suspects, such as snakes and poison oak. Staying on the trail usually keeps you from touching poison oak, and giving snakes a wide berth will most often suffice. By wearing long pants and boots and then doing a tick-check at the end of a hike, you will be wise.
The trails include Asbill Creek Trail, which affords lovely looks at the bubbling mirror-like creek and its inhabitants, as well as some interesting geology nearby with its mud-colored near-vertical walls of layered rock. The Winery Trail follows a pretty field and lovely blue and live oaks, then onto a picturesque cattle barn and ancient valley oaks. The trail gives hidden views through chaparral and oak lands before it meanders uphill through a fragrant mixed forest complete with California bay trees. There are also Happy Camper Trails both North and South, and Eagle Rock Road trail. A list of trails and levels of difficulty can be found at the end of the article.
Although much of the birdlife was hiding from our large group, the flowers were profuse and fun to identify with the ranch’s handy wildflower guide made available to us that day. We were thrilled at the woody lifeforms of larkspur, delicate-looking Chinese houses, always cheery California poppies, Tomcat clover, miner’s lettuce, wild iris with their purple and white variegated petals, gorgeous redbud was in profusion and more!
Many hikers topped off the hike with a wine tasting and lunch. Some came with their own picnics to enjoy under the canopy of shade next to the winery. It was fun to visit with old friends and meet new ones along the way.
If you ever get a chance, pick up proprietor Else Ahlmann’s interesting history of the ranch entitled, ‘Folks Who Walked the Land of Six Sigma Ranch – 150 Years of Life along Asbill Creek’. Her well-researched book is a fascinating look at many, many mysteries of the lands, such as who planted the old fruit orchard, who abandoned the old-timey buggy, where the stove came from, and what are the names of the surrounding landmarks and mountains.
Did you know that their tasting room site was once a stop on a stage route coming out of the quicksilver mines of Knoxville? The book tells of the lives of people and the places and things of long ago. It is also fun to read about the wildlife found out at the ranch!
Get ready to dust off your hiking boots and soak in nature and history within the Six Sigma landscape amidst its surrounding hills cut on the bias before blending back to the flat Earth. Fix your wonder and attention on the preponderance of nature’s bounty in Lake County’s backyard.
The Six Sigma Winery webpage:
Trails:
