Hidden Lake Turtle Hike, 7/27/18 by Ronald Horii
On 7/27/18, Open Space Authority Educational Aide Richard Tejeda led a hike to a part of Rancho Canada del Oro Open Space Preserve that is not open to the public and probably never will be. It's called Hidden Lake and is only accessible by guided hikes. What's special about it is its healthy population of the rare and threatened western pond turtles. It also has endangered red-legged frogs. To get there, we followed Llagas Creek. Richard talked about the trout and steelhead in the creek. We saw them in a couple of places. We hiked to Hidden Lake, following a dry creek that drains into Llagas Creek. It required multiple creek crossings and dodging poison oak to reach the Hidden Lake dam. We walked around the lake and managed to spot several western pond turtles. We were lucky, as the turtles are very shy and reclusive.

Here are pictures I took of western pond turtles at Hidden Lake in 2016: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1126136957409825.1073742063.100000405933924&type=1&l=7759f69eec

Here are more of my pictures of Rancho Canada Del Oro: http://www.rhorii.com/#RCDO

A few years ago, OSA docent Cait Hutnik got great pictures of the turtles in the lake. She would sit quietly and patiently on the shores of the lake for hours and wait for the turtles to appear.
http://lightofmorn.com/html/wpturtles.htm
http://www.lightofmorn.com/html/wpturtles2.htm
http://www.lightofmorn.com/html/wpturtles3.htm
http://www.lightofmorn.com/html/wpturtles4.htm

She made this brochure:
http://www.lightofmorn.com/pdfs/wPondTurtles_SCV.pdf 
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