Stevens Creek (California)
Stevens Creek is a 20.9-mile-long (33.6 km) stream in Santa Clara County, California. The creek originates in the Santa Cruz Mountains on the western flank of Black Mountain in the Monte Bello Open Space Preserve near the terminus of Page Mill Road at Skyline Boulevard. It flows southeasterly through the Stevens Creek County Park before turning northeast into Stevens Creek Reservoir. It then continues north for 12.5 miles (20.1 km) through Cupertino, Los Altos, Sunnyvale and Mountain View before emptying into the San Francisco Bay at the Whisman Slough, near Google's main campus.
Steelhead trout and spawning redd on Stevens Creek
A view along the Stevens Creek Trail near downtown Mountain View
Two pairs of steelhead trout spawning in lower reaches of Stevens Creek may have had difficulty ascending to former spawning grounds due to fish passage barriers
Looking west, from east side of Stevens Creek, at terminus of Permanente Creek Diversion Channel as it exits beneath Highway 85. Here Permanente Creek drops about ten vertical feet over cemented boulders, an impassable barrier to in-migrating steelhead trout, 2013.
Black Mountain (near Los Altos, California)
Black Mountain is a summit on Monte Bello Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains of west Santa Clara County, California, south of Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, and west of Cupertino; it is within the Palo Alto city limits though not near the developed part of the city. It is located on the border between Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve and Monte Bello Open Space Preserve, with the summit located in the former. Early Spanish explorers commonly named tree- or chaparral-covered summits which look black in the distance Loma Prieta, from the Spanish .
The Spanish also called the middle portion of the Santa Cruz Mountains the Sierra Morena meaning, extending from Half Moon Bay Road south to a gap at Lexington Reservoir, and which includes a summit called Sierra Morena.
There are over 100 "Black Mountains" in California.
View of the Santa Cruz Mountains from the summit of Black Mountain on a cloudy day
Panorama from the summit of Black Mountain
View from the highest point of the trail connecting Montebello Road and Page Mill Road.