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From the Bay
to Skyline Ridge

Award-winning Bay-to-Ridge Trail offers hiking challenge, links to nature

Missing only one major link, the long-envisioned Bay-to-Ridge Trail is nearly complete.

On the latest version of the city's Palo Alto Open Space map, the 16-mile trail appears as a long orange line, curving southwest from the Palo Alto Baylands' sailing station through Monte Bello Open Space Preserve in the foothills. Just off the map, the trail extends to the Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve.

On the ground, it is largely unmarked, passing invisibly through places Palo Alto pedestrians already tread — North California Avenue, Stanford Avenue, Old Page Mill Road, the Pearson-Arastradero Preserve and Foothills Park.

In the minds of its supporters, the Bay-to-Ridge Trail represents something even larger. It links the Palo Alto of daily life with the Bay's waters and the west's wooded hills, unimpeded by city boundaries, property ownership or freeways — or by residents-only rules.

It connects the San Francisco Bay Trail and the Ridge Trail, two major efforts to construct Bay-ringing hiking paths.

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And someday, that path will continue all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

"It's just very cool to ... walk out of your door and up to the top of Skyline and down to the ocean," Councilwoman Yoriko Kishimoto said. "It's really a beautiful vision."

As mayor last year, Kishimoto presided over a significant milestone for the trail, the completion of links between Los Trancos Open Space Preserve and Foothills Park and between Foothills Park and the Arastradero Preserve. She and Palo Altan Nonette Hanko, a founder and longtime board member of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD), jointly hammered in a 3-foot-long wooden "spike" painted gold at the place the trail through the city's Foothills Park connects with MROSD lands.

Previously, Foothills Park trails didn't connect with anything, on purpose, to protect its status as accessible only to Palo Alto residents.

But in 2005, the City Council had to agree to open Foothills to through hikers to secure $2 million from the California Coastal Conservancy and Santa Clara County to purchase 13-acre Bressler property, which was subsumed into the Arastradero Preserve.

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By co-opting a utility road and constructing a new trail, those links were completed in September 2007.

"That's really the lynchpin that created the Bay-to-Ridge," Greg Betts, the city's acting community-services director, said of the connection.

Betts entered the nearly complete trail into a statewide contest this spring. It won, capturing a trail-project merit award at the California State Parks' California Trails and Greenways Conference in May.

"The trail not only links parks and open-space areas with urban neighborhoods as the trail passes from tidal marshlands to redwood forests, there are four nature interpretive centers along the trail route to allow travelers to learn about the ecology of the different plant communities along the way," Betts wrote in the award application.


The history of the trail dates back more than a third of a century. It was conceived by Hanko when she was envisioning creation of the MROSD in 1972, as a spinoff of an earlier trail vision: a trail all around the Bay, envisioned by Mary Gordon, then a member of the Palo Alto Planning Commission.

Frances Brenner, also a commission member, favored the city acquiring the former Arastra Ltd. property. In the mid-1960s, a development firm proposed building 1,776 houses on the land, but the city denied it, rezoned the property and in the mid-1970s was forced to acquire the land in a court decision, for a negotiated price of $7.5 million. The land is now a key link in the Bay-to-Ridge Trail.

Hanko, who still serves on the MROSD board, said the Bay-to-Ridge Trail has been a campaign position every time she faces re-election — although she hasn't had to campaign in recent elections because no one has run against her.

Former MROSD Planner Del Woods actually developed a trail alignment along the periphery of Foothills Park, but it was steep and close to private properties.

Betts, as director of open space and parks, suggested looking at existing trails, and Craig Beckman of the MROSD suggested that the best alignment would be to link to the district's Los Trancos Preserve, near the top of Page Mill Road.

Former Palo Alto City Council members and mayors Judy Kleinberg and Dena Mossar also supported the trail concept.

A county planner, Lisa Killough, was put in charge of trails countywide and was one more catalyst in moving the trail forward, Hanko recalled.

Along the way, the Bay-to-Ridge trail was included in the 1995 Santa Clara County Trails Master Plan.

Trail planning kicked off in earnest following the adoption of Palo Alto's 1998 Comprehensive Plan, which called for the city to "evaluate the design of a Bay-to-Foothills path."

Practicality largely drove the selection of the route, Betts said.

"In one sense, the route is the shortest distance between two spots," he said.

Planners utilized an existing path over U.S. Highway 101 and the California Avenue underpass below the railroad tracks. They tried to connect parks and green space — the trail touches Jordan Middle School, Alexander Peers Park, Jerry Bowden Park and comes close to Donaldina M Cameron Park.

And planners used the four nature centers — Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center, the Junior Museum and Zoo, the straw-bale gateway facility at Pearson-Arastradero and the Daniels Nature Center in the Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve — as anchors, Betts said.

They also used existing trails.

In the built-out areas of Palo Alto, planners aimed for less-busy roadways and wide sidewalks, Betts added.

"Palo Alto itself is still a really beautiful route," he said.

One gap remains in the trail. Between Old Page Mill Road and the Arastradero Preserve, across Interstate 280, the path needs to cross Stanford University land.

Stanford agreed to build the critical link as part of its 2000 General Use permit, in which it agreed to construct two trails.

Known as S-1, or southern trail, the Bay-to-Ridge connector was approved — but is now tied up in the lawsuit challenging the northern Stanford trail proposal along Alpine Road.

"Sometimes it just takes longer to build a trail than it does to build a roadway," Betts said. "Sometimes it just takes a while for pieces to fall into place as it did with the serendipity of the 13-acre Bressler property."

Betts said he only knows of one person who has hiked the length of the trail, although others including Kishimoto have hiked large chunks of it.

"We acknowledge that it's not going to be an ant trail of people," he said.

Anyone eager to hike the trail should prepare carefully. It is long and, as its name suggests, climbs more than 1,400 feet. Most of the trail is unmarked so a map is essential for first-time trail hikers.

Signs through the Pearson-Arastradero Preserve, for example, still state trails end at Foothills Park and once at the boundary, a hiker arrives perpendicular to a road, with no clear indication which way to go.

Click here for the Bay-to-Ridge Trail map.

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From the Bay
to Skyline Ridge

Award-winning Bay-to-Ridge Trail offers hiking challenge, links to nature

Missing only one major link, the long-envisioned Bay-to-Ridge Trail is nearly complete.

On the latest version of the city's Palo Alto Open Space map, the 16-mile trail appears as a long orange line, curving southwest from the Palo Alto Baylands' sailing station through Monte Bello Open Space Preserve in the foothills. Just off the map, the trail extends to the Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve.

On the ground, it is largely unmarked, passing invisibly through places Palo Alto pedestrians already tread — North California Avenue, Stanford Avenue, Old Page Mill Road, the Pearson-Arastradero Preserve and Foothills Park.

In the minds of its supporters, the Bay-to-Ridge Trail represents something even larger. It links the Palo Alto of daily life with the Bay's waters and the west's wooded hills, unimpeded by city boundaries, property ownership or freeways — or by residents-only rules.

It connects the San Francisco Bay Trail and the Ridge Trail, two major efforts to construct Bay-ringing hiking paths.

And someday, that path will continue all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

"It's just very cool to ... walk out of your door and up to the top of Skyline and down to the ocean," Councilwoman Yoriko Kishimoto said. "It's really a beautiful vision."

As mayor last year, Kishimoto presided over a significant milestone for the trail, the completion of links between Los Trancos Open Space Preserve and Foothills Park and between Foothills Park and the Arastradero Preserve. She and Palo Altan Nonette Hanko, a founder and longtime board member of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD), jointly hammered in a 3-foot-long wooden "spike" painted gold at the place the trail through the city's Foothills Park connects with MROSD lands.

Previously, Foothills Park trails didn't connect with anything, on purpose, to protect its status as accessible only to Palo Alto residents.

But in 2005, the City Council had to agree to open Foothills to through hikers to secure $2 million from the California Coastal Conservancy and Santa Clara County to purchase 13-acre Bressler property, which was subsumed into the Arastradero Preserve.

By co-opting a utility road and constructing a new trail, those links were completed in September 2007.

"That's really the lynchpin that created the Bay-to-Ridge," Greg Betts, the city's acting community-services director, said of the connection.

Betts entered the nearly complete trail into a statewide contest this spring. It won, capturing a trail-project merit award at the California State Parks' California Trails and Greenways Conference in May.

"The trail not only links parks and open-space areas with urban neighborhoods as the trail passes from tidal marshlands to redwood forests, there are four nature interpretive centers along the trail route to allow travelers to learn about the ecology of the different plant communities along the way," Betts wrote in the award application.


The history of the trail dates back more than a third of a century. It was conceived by Hanko when she was envisioning creation of the MROSD in 1972, as a spinoff of an earlier trail vision: a trail all around the Bay, envisioned by Mary Gordon, then a member of the Palo Alto Planning Commission.

Frances Brenner, also a commission member, favored the city acquiring the former Arastra Ltd. property. In the mid-1960s, a development firm proposed building 1,776 houses on the land, but the city denied it, rezoned the property and in the mid-1970s was forced to acquire the land in a court decision, for a negotiated price of $7.5 million. The land is now a key link in the Bay-to-Ridge Trail.

Hanko, who still serves on the MROSD board, said the Bay-to-Ridge Trail has been a campaign position every time she faces re-election — although she hasn't had to campaign in recent elections because no one has run against her.

Former MROSD Planner Del Woods actually developed a trail alignment along the periphery of Foothills Park, but it was steep and close to private properties.

Betts, as director of open space and parks, suggested looking at existing trails, and Craig Beckman of the MROSD suggested that the best alignment would be to link to the district's Los Trancos Preserve, near the top of Page Mill Road.

Former Palo Alto City Council members and mayors Judy Kleinberg and Dena Mossar also supported the trail concept.

A county planner, Lisa Killough, was put in charge of trails countywide and was one more catalyst in moving the trail forward, Hanko recalled.

Along the way, the Bay-to-Ridge trail was included in the 1995 Santa Clara County Trails Master Plan.

Trail planning kicked off in earnest following the adoption of Palo Alto's 1998 Comprehensive Plan, which called for the city to "evaluate the design of a Bay-to-Foothills path."

Practicality largely drove the selection of the route, Betts said.

"In one sense, the route is the shortest distance between two spots," he said.

Planners utilized an existing path over U.S. Highway 101 and the California Avenue underpass below the railroad tracks. They tried to connect parks and green space — the trail touches Jordan Middle School, Alexander Peers Park, Jerry Bowden Park and comes close to Donaldina M Cameron Park.

And planners used the four nature centers — Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center, the Junior Museum and Zoo, the straw-bale gateway facility at Pearson-Arastradero and the Daniels Nature Center in the Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve — as anchors, Betts said.

They also used existing trails.

In the built-out areas of Palo Alto, planners aimed for less-busy roadways and wide sidewalks, Betts added.

"Palo Alto itself is still a really beautiful route," he said.

One gap remains in the trail. Between Old Page Mill Road and the Arastradero Preserve, across Interstate 280, the path needs to cross Stanford University land.

Stanford agreed to build the critical link as part of its 2000 General Use permit, in which it agreed to construct two trails.

Known as S-1, or southern trail, the Bay-to-Ridge connector was approved — but is now tied up in the lawsuit challenging the northern Stanford trail proposal along Alpine Road.

"Sometimes it just takes longer to build a trail than it does to build a roadway," Betts said. "Sometimes it just takes a while for pieces to fall into place as it did with the serendipity of the 13-acre Bressler property."

Betts said he only knows of one person who has hiked the length of the trail, although others including Kishimoto have hiked large chunks of it.

"We acknowledge that it's not going to be an ant trail of people," he said.

Anyone eager to hike the trail should prepare carefully. It is long and, as its name suggests, climbs more than 1,400 feet. Most of the trail is unmarked so a map is essential for first-time trail hikers.

Signs through the Pearson-Arastradero Preserve, for example, still state trails end at Foothills Park and once at the boundary, a hiker arrives perpendicular to a road, with no clear indication which way to go.

Click here for the Bay-to-Ridge Trail map.

Comments

sally
Midtown
on Jul 29, 2008 at 7:32 pm
sally, Midtown
on Jul 29, 2008 at 7:32 pm

Dear Stanford: Please open the cow tunnel trail to the public. It will have many users and be a great asset to the community. Not only will it complete this fantastic hiking trail, but it will also provide a safe and easy route for bicyclists and pedestrians to access the Arastradero Preserve from Palo Alto and Stanford. The public has been waiting for this link for years. Just do it already. Thank you.


WilliamR
Fairmeadow
on Jul 29, 2008 at 9:49 pm
WilliamR, Fairmeadow
on Jul 29, 2008 at 9:49 pm

How long would it take for an average person to hike the entire distance from the Baylands to Skyline (assuming a detour at Stanford), or how long to do various sections?


Dave Olson
Midtown
on Jul 30, 2008 at 8:22 am
Dave Olson, Midtown
on Jul 30, 2008 at 8:22 am

Depending on exactly what the route was (I'm assuming more or less
up Embarcadero, through the Stanford Campus, up through Arastradero,
Foothill, over to the closed part of Alpine and up to the new
overlook at Clouds Rest Rd just across Skyline from Russian Ridge),
it's about 17-19 miles, and about 2500 to 3000 feet of total vertical
gain.

I'm not sure about "an average person", but most people who hike
8-10 miles 2-4 times a month could easily do this in 2 days walking,
and with a bit of effort, in a single day.

For somebody who doesn't hike at all, it's probably 3 to 4 days
walking, in shorter segments.

Of course, this would require a bit of street walking to get to
Stanford, and entering Foothill from Arastradero is still "forbidden"
because of the implementation of "Palo Alto residents-only" for
Foothill, but it's a pretty pleasant route from Stanford on up
to Skyline.


Dave Olson
Midtown
on Jul 30, 2008 at 8:40 am
Dave Olson, Midtown
on Jul 30, 2008 at 8:40 am

By the way, although the article says there is a connector between Arastradero and Foothill, it was still marked as closed the last time I was up there 3 or 4 months ago. I guess I'll have to go look again...


Norman Beamer
Crescent Park
on Jul 30, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Norman Beamer, Crescent Park
on Jul 30, 2008 at 12:35 pm

A link to a map of the trail would be helpful.


WilliamR
Fairmeadow
on Jul 30, 2008 at 4:29 pm
WilliamR, Fairmeadow
on Jul 30, 2008 at 4:29 pm

Dave Olson, thanks for the information. It sounds like an interesting trek.


Jocelyn Dong
Registered user
editor of the Palo Alto Weekly
on Jul 31, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Jocelyn Dong, editor of the Palo Alto Weekly
Registered user
on Jul 31, 2008 at 5:45 pm

Thanks for the suggestion, Norman. A link to the map is now attached to the story, as well as here:

Web Link


David Sanguinetti
Palo Alto Hills
on Aug 1, 2008 at 4:03 pm
David Sanguinetti, Palo Alto Hills
on Aug 1, 2008 at 4:03 pm

I am the Operations Manager for the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District and would like to take the opportunity to clarify the route and time involved once you reach the City of Palo Alto Arastradero Preserve. Once you reach the Arastradero Parking Lot on Arastradero Road, you hike approximately 6-1/4 miles uphill to the Los Trancos Open Space Preserve Parking Lot. Be sure to take in the lovely vistas on the Open Space District's new and beautifully aligned Page Mill Trail. Once you reach the Los Trancos OSP Parking Lot, you can cross Page Mill Road onto Monte Bello Open Space Preserve and follow the Stevens Creek Nature Trail and the Skid Trail up to Skyline Boulevard (approximately 1.8 miles), where you can cross over into the Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve. This will take 3-1/2 to 4 hours total hiking time at the average hiker's pace. If you have further questions regarding the Open Space Preserves, contact the District's Office (650-691-1200) or go online to www.openspace.org.


Howard Maher
Menlo Park
on Dec 12, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Howard Maher, Menlo Park
on Dec 12, 2008 at 12:42 pm

Hi Dave, My guess about the Arastradero-Foothill connection is that the City doesn't necessarily ADVERTISE that you can hike through, but you probably can.


Tony Pinkham
Mountain View
on Apr 16, 2009 at 11:13 am
Tony Pinkham, Mountain View
on Apr 16, 2009 at 11:13 am

There is a provision for out-of-town hikers to pass through Foothills Park while hiking the Bay-to-Ridge trail. They just cannot have Foothills Park as their hike terminus/destination (start or end)--that is, they can go from Arastradero through Foothills Park to Los Trancos Open Space and points beyond. That is a long but beautiful hike.


Sarah
Midtown
on Apr 16, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Sarah, Midtown
on Apr 16, 2009 at 12:14 pm

Are bicycles allowed on this trail? At my age, a 38 mile round trip hike is impractical, but I would love to try it on my bicycle.


Dinesh Desai
Los Altos
on Sep 7, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Dinesh Desai, Los Altos
on Sep 7, 2009 at 8:34 pm

Last spring, a few of us walked from the Bay to the Ridge and then all the way to the ocean. We took two days and covered approximately 46 miles. An account of our trek and the description of our route is at
Web Link


Josh Kelly
Barron Park
on Aug 18, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Josh Kelly, Barron Park
on Aug 18, 2010 at 6:16 pm

Any updates? What's going on with the stanford lawsuit? Is the cow tunnel trail built but just not open? Or still hypothetical? Also can you post a map of what the whole tail will look like when complete?


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