Bay Area’s peak trails revealed by hikers’ reviews
By one expert estimate, the Bay Area has 10,000 miles of trails. That’s a lot.
They snake through the East Bay hills, crisscross the wooded spine of the Peninsula, and spiral up the burly flanks of the region’s resident mountain immortals, Tamalpais and Diablo. We love trails so much we’ve converted old rail lines and causeways into pedestrian corridors and conjured them in paved urban settings. Case in point: the 17-mile Crosstown Trail that cuts across San Francisco — not a traditional dirt path but a scenic walking route nonetheless.
Many hikers, cyclists and commuters here hope to one day see these fragmented pathways linked together into a single cohesive alt-transit system encircling San Francisco Bay — imagine a giant web with loops and tendrils in every corner of the region, where no home is farther than 1 mile from the nearest trailhead. But even without that, we’re still living in a hiker’s paradise.
“What’s unique about the Bay Area is the phenomenal diversity of natural scenery and landscapes that are all so accessible,” says Janet
McBride, executive director of the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council, which hopes to stitch together a 550-mile loop trail around the entire bay.
Whether you’ve got a whole day to commit to a calf-busting nature excursion or you want just a quick afternoon outdoor escape, there’s something for everyone.
“It’s all here, and it’s all close by,” McBride says.
Everyone here has a favorite trail. But what are the Bay Area’s most popular ones?
To answer that question, we sifted through data from AllTrails.com, a popular web platform that collates user-generated ratings and reviews of hiking and mountain-biking routes worldwide. The company provided The Chronicle with profiles of about 2,900 routes across the nine-county Bay Area. Each trail has an average of about 230 reviews, amounting to over 600,000 reviews of local trails. AllTrails wouldn’t provide information on its user base here, so it’s unclear what kinds of people submitted the routes, ratings and reviews. (The full dataset, with each trail’s average AllTrails rating, difficulty and location is searchable at AllTrails.com.)
Using this data, The Chronicle generated a list of the 10 best hikes in the Bay Area. The list is largely based on average rating score for routes with at least 100 ratings while avoiding overlapping routes. We also considered trail difficulty in specific cases: We excluded a few highly rated trails that are longer than 15 miles with more than 3,000 feet of elevation gain — hikes that are inaccessible to all but the most experienced hikers.
So, what made the top 10? Start exploring below.
Dipsea Trail to Steep Ravine Trail Loop from Stinson (Mount Tamalpais/Muir Woods, Stinson Beach)
The Dipsea Trail has been a local favorite for more than a century, since at least 1905, when it was selected as the route for what is billed as the “oldest trail race in America.” The annual Dipsea Race has been going strong ever since, leading runners through 7.4 miles of Mount Tam’s southern haunches between Mill Valley and Stinson Beach.
Hikers often opt to use the trail for a more modest 6-mile loop that is one of the most soul-satisfying nature hikes in the Bay Area. It’s a legendary trail, and for good reason.
Starting from Stinson Beach, the Dipsea ascends through shaded oak groves studded with leafy ferns, then traces up a cool, narrow canyon lush with oldgrowth redwoods. This is the sensuous Steep Ravine portion of the route, and it’s an all-timer for tranquility. (Steep Ravine is currently closed due to bridge repairs and maintenance.)
After a lengthy climb through the ravine — involving, at one point, a 14rung wooden ladder — you pop out at the Pantoll parking area in Mount Tamalpais State Park. From there the trail splinters into a wagon wheel of enticing options in every direction. Many opt to loop back down to Stinson via the Matt Davis trail for a tidy 6-mile circuit.
This portion, too, is uniquely spectacular: A jaunt through stands of tall pines and bay trees opens to a bare hillside with sweeping views of the Pacific all the way down to the Stinson trailhead. It’s truly stunning.
“It’s our most popular trail, no question,” said Katelyn O’Hare, state park peace officer ranger at Mount Tamalpais State Park. “We get locals who come every day, every week. They’re here all the time. The community around Marin and Mill Valley love this mountain and this trail.”
Once you’re done, consider running across to Stinson Beach for a quick hop in the ocean. After all, according to Marin Magazine, the name Dipsea is “meant to encourage guests to take a dip in the sea” after completing it. — Gregory Thomas, gthomas@sfchronicle.com
Pomo Canyon Trail to Red Hill (Sonoma Coast State Park, Occidental)
The Pomo Canyon Trail has been a source of wonder for many centuries. The trail served as a trading route from the Pacific Ocean to the Pomo
Canyon for the indigenous Miwok and Pomo people.
Located in the Sonoma Coast State Park, inland from a series of beaches and rock bluffs, the 4.4mile trail begins with a short walk that brings you to the Pomo Canyon Environmental Campground. Nestled in redwoods, it’s a lovely place to camp, assuming you get there early enough — it’s non-reservable.
After passing through the campground, the trip gets both more beautiful and more challenging, with a steep incline through tall redwoods. After a rise of about 500 feet, the trail opens up into gorgeous rolling hills. Finally,
hikers reach Red Hill and one of the Bay Area’s most spectacular views, the sight of the Russian River emptying into the Pacific Ocean.
The 2½-hour trail is an out-and-back trek with a 1mile loop at the turnaround point, so the return is mostly through the same terrain. For those looking for a longer jaunt, an optional extension adds 3 miles by going all the way to Shell Beach, a great spot for exploring tidepools.
Located two hours by car from San Francisco, the hike is a perfect day trip for the intrepid city dweller. And with the trailhead less than 30 minutes from both Bodega Bay and Guerneville, a hungry hiker can stop for fish at the Fishetarian Fish Market in Bodega Bay or sandwiches at the Big Bottom Market in Guerneville on the way home. — Dan Kopf, dan.kopf@sfchronicle.com
Tennessee Valley, Muir Beach, Coastal and Fox Trail (Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Mill Valley)
This “trail” is actually a handful of them, strung together into a challenging 6.7-mile loop that starts wedged between West Marin hillsides, then traces the coast’s contours before an epic ridgeline return. Add optional detours
in Dipsea about 35 times over the past 40 years, running one hour 18 minutes at her fastest in 1988. Last June, at age 69, she finished in just over two hours. This year’s race was a rarity: Winner Edward Owens, 28, both had the fastest actual time of 48:34 and was quick enough to beat all the handicap-assisted runners.
A complicated and shifting algorithm sets handicaps based on age and gender, from no handicap to 25 minutes. In 2010, 8-yearold Mill Valley elementary school student Reilly Johnson took advantage of her 25-minute head start and won the race. One legend named Jack Kirk raced the Dipsea until he was 96.
Forrestel from the GGNRA remembers her first time, too, during the 100th anniversary of the 1918 women’s race. She’s a runner and in good shape, but still found it challenging.
“It was really, really awesome and I was so sore for like a week afterward,” she said. “That trail is no joke.”
What keeps them coming back? The challenge and the beauty. And Sullivan swears you learn to love it through the pain.
“It’s about knowing the trail and knowing your body,” she said.
After the Irish runners pass, I decide to run the next mile and a half, dropping into Muir Woods where tourists are lining up with their reservations, then up the first part of a hill called Dynamite.
It’s a poor tactical move. “Slow on the uphill and stupid on the downhill,” I hear later, is how to manage the pace. I stop in a woodsy area for a drink and lose most of the good time I made with the run. The rest of the uphill is steady and defeating. I look on a map later and confirm that this stretch is more than 2 miles long with a 1,200-foot climb.
Above the fog
But there’s a clearing on top, with a low blanket of clouds in the distance, and signs of San Francisco — Sutro Tower and the downtown skyline — above the marine layer. The view is jarring. I’ve seen mighty redwoods and a stream where coho salmon swim, and will drop into a Jurassic world of conifers and seed ferns. And yet the city is just a 30-minute drive away.
I take a serendipitous wrong turn and run into Gee Heckscher, 84, and Jane Middleton, 78, making their way back from their own detour. Heckscher is on the trail for the first time in 17 years. He once ran a quad Dipsea — more than 28 miles from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach and back twice — at age 60.
They guide me back to the trail, and tell their stories.
Heckscher had run Bay to Breakers a few times before he heard about Dipsea. He ran his first trail race at 50.
“I got up here and it was just magical,” he remembered. “Looking out at the city poking up above the fog, and the sea covered with fog, and no sound except every once in a while … you could hear traffic on Panoramic Highway a mile or so away.”
His story trails off and he stares at the view, as if he’s enjoying it for the first time.
Middleton laughs as she talks about an ex who took her on the Dipsea Trail in her early 20s, the day after she had surgery. She thought she’d need a helicopter to get out.
Later, when she worked as a nurse on the surgical floor at Marin General Hospital, she’d tell departing patients, “You’re going home today. Don’t do the Dipsea. Give yourself a few weeks.”
I walk with them for a mile, then emerge from the woods again, and smell the ocean before I see it. The building pain in my legs feels abstract, and I want to run again.
“I didn’t ask. How old are you?” Heckscher yells after me as I leave.
“52!” I shout back, gathering speed.
Trail years
The rest is a blur. I emerge, anticlimactically, at Highway 1, and snap a picture with the Stinson Beach sign. I was thinking about what I’d eat in town, but don’t have time for both a sitdown meal and the beach before my Marin Transit bus back to Mill Valley arrives. (I choose the beach.)
By bedtime my legs feel more sore than they have in years. A day and a half later I’m walking down the stairs sideways like a crab, clutching the railing and groaning with each step as my family laughs.
But I feel both older and younger, like Tom Hanks at the end of “Castaway,” or Red from “Shawshank Redemption” on that bus to Zihuatanejo. “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
I don’t love hiking much more than I did last week, but I like this feeling of my life stretching out in front of me, further than before. I like the humbling beauty of the city in the distance, and the way Sutro Tower feels different the next time I’m up close.
And I like the idea of being the one who dispenses Yoda-like wisdom to trail newcomers. Of being 84 years old someday, and still having more adventures on the horizon.