Category: Trail Running

Pescadero Creek Park, together Sam MacDonald Park and Memorial Park, form the Pescadero Complex of county parks in the central Santa Cruz Mountains. The scenery is gorgeous and varied, including lush redwood forest, ridge vistas, grassy meadows, and stream crossings. In addition, there were two sections of old growth, one along Canyon Trail, and the…

Big Basin is always a favorite spot to run and this time I joined Gary Gellin, Will Gotthardt, and Ryan Commons for some exploration of new trails within Big Basin and also neighboring Little Basin. In the process we ascended two high points in the area, Buzzard’s Roost and Eagle Rock, both offering super views…

Windy Hill Open Space Preserve has one of my favorite loops. Beginning in Portola Valley and rising to Skyline Blvd, the route has a great mix of singletrack, forest, meadows, streams, and views. The run begins at the main parking area for Windy Hill. I usually take the fireroad on the way in and the…

I ran the 18th Annual Stinson Beach 25k yesterday by Enviro-Sports. The course contains the best collection of single track in Mount Tamalpais State Park and Muir Woods National Monument. Aside from the first mile on the Dipsea Trail, I have never run most of these trails so there was something new around every corner. …

I checked out another stellar peninsula trail running location at Sanborn County Park and Castle Rock State Park. The loop I ran covered between 12 and 12.5 miles with a great variety of trails, beautiful forest, great vistas, and no trail repeated. The start/finish point was at Saratoga Gap. I began with a 3.2 mile…

Armed with recent trail info from Will Gotthardt (thanks!), I checked out the Peters Creek Loop at Portola Redwoods State Park. An excerpt from the State Park’s description of the hike sums it up best: “This long and strenuous hike takes you to some of the most spectacular old growth redwoods in the Santa Cruz…

I dropped my mom off at the San Jose airport so I took the opportunity to visit a pair of parks I have never seen in the area just outside of Cupertino: Fremont Older Open Space Preserve and Stevens Creek County Park. These parks are great! The vistas are gorgeous and there is nice variety…

I had great memories of the Golden Hills Trail Marathon from last year so it was an easy decision to return this year. The marathon course does a grand tour of the East Bay Regional Parks traveling through Tilden, Sibley, Huckleberry, Redwood, and Lake Chabot Regional Parks. There is ample hill climbing on the route…