It struck me the other day that I sometimes feel compelled to ooze nothing but niceness about the local trails. Most are good to great, it’s true, but they can’t all be, and besides, a little bellyaching is good for the soul (mixed metaphors are allowed on national holidays; I looked it up).
So what the heck, if you’ve got nothing nice to say, chime in!
My nominees:
Guadalupe River Trail though downtown San Jose. It’s not so much the homeless people living under the downtown bridges — hey, they’re camping out, right? It’s more the jets flying over every seven minutes on final approach to the San Jose airport. And the litter. It’s a bit unfair, I suppose, to pick on an urban trail that’s not intended to provide a wilderness experience but lordy, once you’ve seen the ocean from the ridges of the Santa Cruz Mountains or taken in the view from Mission Peak or hiked through two ends of a giant redwood sawed away to keep the trail clear, walking in the shade of skyscrapers really doesn’t cut it.
Ed Levin County Park: It pains me to say this because this is the first park I did much hiking in, mainly because it was just down the road. Now that it’s no longer handy I can face up to the fact that hiking there in the summer is dusty and sweltering with almost no shade, while hiking in winter means ankle-deep in muck and you never know if you’re stuck in mud or cow crap or both. And speaking of cows: there are too damn many of them.
Well, those are the first that spring to mind. Please feel free to weigh in so I’m not the lone complainer.
I like this idea of trail-bashing, Tom!
There’s a particularly unsightly section of Oursan Trail heading down from the Briones Reservoir Overlook toward the San Pablo Dam Reservoir that passes through, under and around, for a thousand feet or more, a horrific phalanx of electrical towers, pylons, and overhead wires buzzing and crackling. You feel zapped, literally, and sapped of enthusiasm, but there’s no turning back now.
Albany Bulb trail system: oooh, the views are splendid of the Marin Headlands, Golden Gate Bridge, the shining City, and Emeryville / Oakland and the entire East Bay hills . . . but the trails, while leading through pretty areas, are littered with the detritus of the dispossessed and displaced (OK, the also known as the homeless). Several years ago, Albany and the State cleaned up the place of scofflaw campers and squatters, renegade artists, whose sculptures and murals still exist in a weird outdoor museum scene – but the trails themselves are grubby — I’ve seen limping rats, used condoms, a syringe, discarded, molding clothing – it’s pretty yucky, actually, but I ride a bike there occasionally which mitigates it because you’re flying through it faster.
Crappy trails, in general, I agree with Tom – this means every East Bay Regional Park District trail I can think of that allows cows to muck up the trails even worse than mud. Mud, I can deal with.
I nominate the standard eastbound approach to Mission Peak from Standford Avenue in Fremont — especially on any kind of a clear, warm day. It’s a dry, open, (almost) totally unshaded route through relatively un-picturesque terrain populated with numerous trainees for the Darwin Awards. There are also plenty of cows. On most weekend days you’ll have to dodge pickup trucks hauling hang-gliders. I prefer the approach from the Sunol side any day.
I concur w/Steve that the back side of Mission is a far better hike, but I have to reserve a place in my affections for the Stanford Avenue route — hiking to the top that way was my first major milestone.
Wow, great minds on board here – Mission Peak from Stanford Ave. came to mind immediately. I won’t do it unless it’s foggy or otherwise overcast. I don’t mind the hill, just add some CHARACTER along the way! I don’t know how or if its reputation can be salvaged, but making a shuttle run out of it and heading down the backside is as good a cure as any.
I’ve only been on a couple of trails at Ed Levin park, but I have to agree that they aren’t particularly pleasing and I won’t do them again. Even the ones unpopulated by cows can turn to ankle-deep mudpits in the winter, and the trails are blazingly hot and dusty (and largely unshaded) in the summer.
(In the park’s defense, the stroll around Sandy Wool Lake is nice enough (though very short), and if you enjoy birdwatching it is a good place to linger – but don’t walk it when it’s wet or you;ll be slipping in mud along part of it.)