Hiking up a steep pitch of Fitch Mountain on a recent morning, pointing out various ferns and flowers with one hand while wielding a trekking pole in the other, Rhonda Bellmer let a visitor in on a little secret:

“It’s not really a mountain.”

Despite its name, this standalone peak north and east of Healdsburg city limits, an extinct volcano around which the Russian River bends, tops out at 991 feet. That’s 9 feet shy of the dividing line long used by geographic societies to sort hills from mountains.

Regardless of its height, Fitch Mountain is coming up in the world.

State Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat who hails from Healdsburg, announced last week that he has secured the final $1.5 million needed to create a trailhead, expand the trail system and add other amenities that will make the 173-acre public preserve encompassing most of the hilltop much more accessible.

“By next summer, hikers and dog walkers alike will have easier access to this gorgeous property, along with restrooms and an enhanced trail system to enjoy,” said McGuire in a statement.

That $1.5 million has been transferred to the state Coastal Conservancy, a financial partner in the Fitch Mountain Park and Preserve project, along with an additional $1.2 million from the city of Healdsburg, which acquired the preserve in 2017. In 2014, in his final year on the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, McGuire negotiated the deal that put the top of Fitch Mountain into public ownership and opened up the property in perpetuity.

“This is a promise kept,” said Ray Holley, founder of the Fitch Mountain Fund, which stands ready to help the city manage the preserve, should public funds dry up. In the middle of the previous decade “when this acquisition was going through, we told the community they were going to have access to the mountain.”

While the planned upgrades would’ve eventually come to pass, said Holley, “the funding Mike secured allows it to be done all at once, and not in phases.”

Most who use the preserve begin their hikes at the trailhead near the Villa Chanticleer Dog Park, just 3 miles from the Healdsburg Plaza. For now, the trails at the base of the mountain are a bit overgrown, narrow and largely unmarked.

“I can’t take some people through there, it’s just not safe,” said Bellmer of one especially inhospitable section. She is a trustee of the Fitch Mountain Association, a group of 340 homeowners who live on and around the mountain.

That rough section will be much more accessible, once the project is complete. Improvements will include a bridge over a seasonal creek through which scarcely a trickle passed on Wednesday morning.

Even if that bridge ends up being “more of a feature than a necessity, it’s going to be really pretty,” said Pat Abercrombie.

“We’ll be like Mill Valley,” wisecracked another hiker, passing through.

Abercrombie is a former president of the Fitch Mountain Association. Like Bellmer, he is a fixture on its slopes, inspecting waterbars on trails, pulling French broom, an invasive and highly flammable shrub, pausing mid-sentence to identify the songs of various birds.

The planned enhancements to Fitch Mountain are apt to attract more people to his beloved preserve, and Abercrombie is fine with that.

“What they’re proposing to do makes total sense,” he said, back in the parking lot. Pointing to a single, forlorn portable toilet near the dog park, he added, “There is the restroom for the entire Fitch Mountain Preserve.”

Noting that 95% of wildfires are caused by human beings, Abercrombie allowed that putting more people on the mountain could increase fire danger — in a place at high risk of rampaging flames.

But putting more people in the park also gives those visitors “an opportunity to become stewards of the preserve,” Abercrombie said. “If they’re enjoying the place they must understand the dangers that go with being in a preserve like this.”

A deep, long-standing fear in Healdsburg, stoked by megafires in recent years, is fixed on Fitch Mountain. Should it ignite, that conflagration could in turn send a jet stream of embers — “like a Roman candle,” is a phrase often used — toward the heart of the city.

Herculean efforts and hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years have gone into preventing that nightmare from coming to pass. A host of groups and agencies, including Landpaths, which has helped Healdsburg take care of the mountain; Cal Fire, the Northern Sonoma County Fire District, and the Fitch Mountain Citizens Organized to Prepare for Emergencies — of which Bellmer is co-chair — have cleared and burned vast amounts of fuel.

“We’ve done more in the last three to five years, in terms of reducing vegetation and fire risk, than in the previous 100 years,” said Ariel Kelley, vice mayor of Healdsburg. “It’s really transformed the mountain.”

The upgrades to Fitch Mountain are in keeping with a broader embrace of open space amenities, said Skip Brand, owner of the Healdsburg Running Company. The emphasis on trails and recreation is helping the city cultivate an active, outdoor brand — “like Boulder, or Bend,” he said.

While Sonoma County is known for wine and high-end food, he said, it is also a go-to location for endurance activities — and Brand, whose running group regularly meets up to stride Fitch Mountain, is one of area’s chief promoters.

Young adults thronging to the area, “coming up from the Bay Area and Marin — they’re not going to five tasting rooms. They’re coming up here to run or hike or bike or kayak or get on a stand-up paddle board,” he said.

Soon, they’ll be arriving to bag the 991-foot summit of Fitch Mountain on a revamped trail network. Will the crowds get out of hand?

“That’s still some pretty steep terrain,” he said. “I don’t think anybody’s going to be hauling a keg up there.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.

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