Crosstown Train (part 2)
A field trip to San Francisco's epic new urban trail
This is the second installment of a two part story about hiking San Francisco’s Crosstown Trail. To read the first installment, CLICK HERE.
I awoke for Day 2 of my Crosstown Trail hike at sunrise, feeling the past day’s mileage in my soles and also, my groin. Just before leaving Boston to hike the trail, I had gone cross-country skiing for the first time in two years and my adductor muscles were still going JESUS MAN. So in the soft light of my hotel room at The Mosser, I undertook an early morning ritual that I’d recommend for anyone going on a multi-day urban hike. I performed a bit of myofascial release on my soles and adductors by massaging them with a tennis ball that I had brought along for this purpose. I also decided to be more disciplined about taking regular breaks from hiking every two miles, to give my lower body a bit more of a breather from the pavement and the stairs I’d be climbing today.
Still, I knew it would take a little walking to warm up my soft tissues and transition into hiking mode. Thankfully, a bit of walking is required to pick up any urban trail again. By the time I reached the MUNI light rail station near the hotel, waiting for the train back to the Forest Hill station where I ended my hike the other day, I was ready.
Hopefully.
SECTION 3: FOREST HILL TO GOLDEN GATE PARK
Something was different this morning. The usual fog that briefly shrouds SF before the sun breaks through had coalesced into the first bonafide shower system that the city had seen in several weeks. It was hard to be that bitter about the rainy weather considering the net benefit this posed for the thirsty landscape around me. And as I soon discovered after exiting Forest Hills station and making my way up a hillside greenway behind the facility, the thicker fog offered a slight benefit on this particular section of the trail. It kept me from glimpsing what lay more than 100 feet ahead of me. Why is this a good thing? Because the midsection of the Crosstown Trail is a lung busting ascent up towering staircases and steep side streets to Grand View Park, a high point on Turtle Hill in the city’s affluent Sunset District. Personally, I find that when you’re gaining serious elevation, having a somewhat limited view of the ascent that lies in front of you can keep you from becoming demoralized. Plus, ascending all these stairs higher and higher into the fog had a slightly mystical vibe to it. At some point, the stairs would have to run out, but what exactly was waiting for me up there?
The image above is what Grand View Park looks like on a clear day. The image below is what I saw after ascending the final staircase—the Moraga Stairs—to the pinnacle.
In situations like this, when the weather deprives you of a rewarding outlook, you can succumb to disappointment or you can focus on other interesting elements of the hike: the construction of the trail, the vegetation flanking the trail, or in my case, the stairs that took me down from Grand View Park back into the residential maze. These two gargantuan staircases—the 16th Avenue Tiled Steps and the 16th Avenue Hidden Garden Stairway—are essentially giant mosaics. The colorful tiles that neighborhood volunteers embedded on the edge of each step depict mountain streams, exploding suns, and galactic starscapes teeming with all sorts of lifeforms. If you’re descending these stairs on a wet day like I did, keep a firm grip on the railing, but at the bottom of each section, be sure to turn around for a shocking explosion of color from the fog.
At the bottom of the stairs, the trail descended at a more patient grade past attractive single family houses with blooming patios. But not far ahead, I could see a great mass forest green beyond the houses. This wall of green is Golden Gate Park, and it also marks the point at which the Crosstown Trail segues away from visiting the lesser known green spaces of SF to bypassing its more superlative leafy realms. It’s also your first real chance to grab some coffee or a snack on this third section of the trail. After paying for a small black at a Starbucks near here, I grabbed a bushel of napkins from the dispenser—to dry my iPhone and face—and I stuffed another handful in my rain jacket pocket. Who knew what the last two legs of the trail would have in store?
SECTION 4: GOLDEN GATE PARK TO THE PRESIDIO
You would think the Crosstown Trail would take its time winding through the curated expanse of Golden Gate Park after passing through Breon Gate off of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. But the trail seems to be in a hurry to get through the park as efficiently as possible. With the exception of a brief stroll around Stowe Lake, where some ducks were happily paddling away beneath a medieval-style stone bridge, there aren’t many points of interest along this stretch, except for the abundant flora of the park (which is still pretty transcendent if you’re coming from a mid-winter climate like I was.) After swerving through the Rose Garden to exit the north side of the park, the Crosstown Trail arrives at the mouth of a more curious feature—the Presidio Park Greenway.
The words “Presidio” and “Greenway” might suggest an elegantly sculpted pathway to the palatial park near the Golden Gate Bridge. And utility-wise, that’s what the Presidio Park Greenway is. But what surprised me about this greenway was how untamed and rugged it often looked from the inside. It’s a thin corridor of dark and shaggy forest, running seven blocks north to the entrance gates of the Presidio Landmark (a former marine hospital that’s now a 220,000 square foot luxury apartment complex.) Two very busy roads flank the greenway from both sides and yet, the trees along the trail here were so thick and insulating that at times, I found myself looking over my shoulder when bushes or leaves nearby would suddenly rustle. I don’t know what I was expecting to pop out of them, but it really demonstrated how little square mileage it takes to bring the experience of being deep in the woods to the middle of a city.
If there’s any downside to the northern half of the Crosstown Trail, it’s the relatively slim pickings for trailside food and drink (the southern half of the trail, by comparison, hand, bypasses a great deal of savory joints.) Consider the Presidio Park Greenway your last chance for devouring something sweet or salty, and be ready to detour off trail for this. At the Balboa Street crossing, mid-greenway, I hiked an extra 0.7 miles east to order an El Jefe chipotle burger from Uncle Boy’s before backtracking to the greenway, adding an extra 1.4 miles to an already stacked hiking agenda. My hip flexors were starting to twinge here and there, and I couldn’t tell whether this was because I was walking too much or because my mind was fearing an overuse injury, despite taking breaks. I still had 4 miles to hike. But what lay in store for me along the final leg of the Crosstown Trail was about to supplant all of those troubled thoughts…
SECTION 5: THE PRESIDIO TO LAND’S END
Several months back, I wrote a newsletter about the thrill of hikes that make you feel like you’re trespassing, and that’s really what it feels like to finish the Crosstown Trail. From the moment you cross onto the grounds of the Presidio Landmark, hiking to the left of its iron gates and picking up a paved pedestrian trail around the lux apartment citadel, you cross into a preserved landscape of Californian coastal terrain that’s often bought up by billionaires and fenced off from the common riffraff like you or me.
First stop: a trailside overlook above Lobos Creek Valley, a pocket of dunes and coastal scrub that contains the last free-flowing stream in San Francisco and offers a vivid snapshot of what much of the city looked like before it was urbanized. The trail suddenly transitions from pavement to sand and descends into the valley through a spacious curtain of lone cypress trees, eventually picking up a snake-like boardwalk through the scrubby lowlands. I’m a sucker for a good bridge or boardwalk and this one ran for half a mile. But things got even sweeter after I crossed Lincoln Boulevard and entered a more cavernous stretch of woods. A little-used sandy path took me to the edge of a chuckling creek, with the foundations of fancy houses on one side and a chain-link fence on the other, practically choking the trail at points. Whacking aside branches and plants that had overgrown the pathway, I could hear a low monotone roar ahead and then, without any warning, the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge appeared through the chainlink fence on my right and I emerged onto Baker Beach.
The Crosstown Trail planners could have concluded the hike right here, at one of the finest viewpoints of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. But an angled climb up some wooden stairs through more trees delivers you to the gilded streets of Sea Cliff. Here, I hiked past flawlessly-carved topiary, security cameras, and the enormous front doors of seaside mansions, exchanging brief nods with landscaping crews and the occasional perturbed resident walking their dog. But the image that’s haunted me as I reminisce on hiking through this corridor of wealth is the sight of a maid lugging two empty trash bins back toward one of the mansions, passing under an archway that perfectly framed the rolling expanse of the Pacific Ocean before disappearing behind the mansion, to an otherwise unseen life I had just caught a momentary glimpse of.
The final clifftop trail to Land’s End I’ll leave partially-cloaked in mystery in hope that a few of you may hike the Crosstown Trail, except to say that the views of the Pacific from this roller coastering trail offer the sense that you’re about to walk off the face of the earth into a watery blue yonder. While the trail does involve stairs, it’s wide and smooth and mostly gentle: perfect for allowing your mind to wander as you savor the final 1.4 miles of the Crosstown Trail. Sitting on a green bench at an ocean overlook, stretching my hamstrings again, I realized I was overcome by a creeping sadness to almost be done with the trail. But before I could wallow in grief, an elderly gentleman with a cane wandered into my peripheral vision, standing before the overlook toward the verdant fog-wisped hills of the Marin Headlands, directly north of Land’s End. I raised my iPhone to take a picture just in time for him to turn around and look right into the lens. I braced myself for a confrontation but instead, he just smiled, without any words, and returned to enjoying the view. We were here for the same reason, I imagine. And I’d like to think that years from now, if I’m using a cane or any sort of implement to continue hiking, I could find myself looking into someone else’s lens.
We’ve met before, pal, I might think.
The Crosstown Trail concludes at the Land’s End visitors center, where—if you’ve still got some gas in the tank—you can stumble down a set of winding stairs to the Sutro Baths, a set of cliffside saltwater pools filled by the Pacific and built by the millionaire Adolph Sutro during the 19th Century. (He actually envisioned the baths as something that all San Franciscans could avail themselves of.) A 40-ish minute ride east on the 38R bus will get you back to downtown SF in time for a four-figure calorie dinner and whatever else your body might desire after hiking 17 miles across a city. But don’t feel any pressure to hustle from here. There are plenty of benches by the visitor parking area where you can gaze out at the Pacific, which is what I spent an hour doing upon completing the trail. The salty breeze was whipping and picking up speed. There was a kid screaming nearby. My last protein bar, fished from the bottom of my backpack, had been twisted and squashed into a turd-like thing, even by protein bar standards.
But it was hunky dory. Because I had just taken the best urban hike of my life. So far.
The day after returning home on a red eye flight with a Chicago stopover, I looked at a map of Boston. I noted the city’s largest green spaces, from Bunker Hill to Hyde Park: well beyond the limits of Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace. I wondered if there was a way to connect these green spaces by trail and sidewalk. I fiddled with mapping tools for the entire afternoon. By dusk, I had something on my hands. A prospect to test-hike.
The spirit of the Crosstown Trail has afflicted me. And you know what? I’m fine with it.
