Bay Area hills in early April, a wide panorama of rolling green ridges with the South Bay visible in the distance

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Ed Levin in April: Mustard, Paragliders, and a Clear South Bay

California·April 5, 2025·2 min read

A second visit to Ed Levin a week later — the yellow mustard is in, the air is unusually clear, and there are paragliders working the ridge lift above the same hillside we hiked two weeks ago.

We went back to Ed Levin a week later because the timing felt obvious. The mustard had been about to bloom; now it had. It's the kind of one-week difference that you only see if you visit the same place twice.

Panoramic view of green Bay Area hills from above, blue sky, the South Bay visible in the distance — The view from the upper slope. Same valley as two weeks ago, different light.

The first thing to change is the foreground. Now there are yellow patches in every direction — mustard, plus the early signs of fiddleneck, lupine, and California poppy. The grass is still green underneath, but the dominant color is shifting.

A hillside with bright yellow mustard flowers in the foreground, the South Bay valley in the distance — Mustard taking over the foreground. By late April it will dominate.

The second thing is visibility. The air on this particular afternoon was unusually clean — you could see all the way to the salt ponds at the south end of the Bay, and on the far side of the valley the Santa Cruz Mountains were sharp instead of fuzzy.

The third thing is people in the sky. Ed Levin is the main paragliding launch for the South Bay, and on a good wind day there are usually at least a few canopies above the ridge. We watched two of them work the lift along the same hillside we'd been hiking on.

Two paragliders flying over rolling green and yellow hills, fence in the foreground, blue sky above — Two paragliders working the ridge lift. They circle for hours.

If you only have time for one Ed Levin visit in the spring, the first week of April is the move. The mustard is in, the green hasn't dropped out yet, and the temperature is still cool enough to climb the steeper trails without suffering.

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