chrsdipietro94@
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2020
I'm working on a project with a goal of walking our entire local trail system. We have a fairly well connected modular system throughout the valley. I was inspired to embark on this project by a guy who completed a project with a goal of covering all of the ground in San Francisco.
Typically, you can traverse a wide array of habitat and micro-climates in one walk. If you're really motivated, you can navigate a route from river level (675ft) up onto Mission Peak (6850ft) crossing 20 miles of well maintained trail and forest road. It would take all day, and by the end of that day, you would probably be pretty irritable because you still had to navigate back to town from point 6850, and it was already past sunset, and you started at sunrise (my wife and I did this when we first moved here... it was a true test of our marital abilities).
Having recently completed the network surrounding Saddle Rock Gateway trail-head, today I moved over to Foothills. Within each area, typically, I start with a loop consisting of some of the main veins and arteries. There's a lot of ground to cover in each zone. On subsequent trips I focus on navigating to new ground as efficiently as possible within the system. It took 9 return trips to Saddle Rock to cover all of the ground in that Canyon. Foothills/Horse Lake will probably take twice as many.
Here's what it looked like today.
This area is in full desert mode this time of year. Today was a bit windy. The trail-bed is the consistency dry concrete with 3 inches of beach sand/moon dust on top. Breezes kick up the dust. If somebody blows by you on a bike, you eat their dust... literally.
Here are a few shots from walks around Saddle Rock
This an interesting angle. When you look at it from the East side of the river (head on) it looks like a saddle, hence the name. Looking at it on the South face, it looks a bit like a shark fin.
Typically, you can traverse a wide array of habitat and micro-climates in one walk. If you're really motivated, you can navigate a route from river level (675ft) up onto Mission Peak (6850ft) crossing 20 miles of well maintained trail and forest road. It would take all day, and by the end of that day, you would probably be pretty irritable because you still had to navigate back to town from point 6850, and it was already past sunset, and you started at sunrise (my wife and I did this when we first moved here... it was a true test of our marital abilities).
Having recently completed the network surrounding Saddle Rock Gateway trail-head, today I moved over to Foothills. Within each area, typically, I start with a loop consisting of some of the main veins and arteries. There's a lot of ground to cover in each zone. On subsequent trips I focus on navigating to new ground as efficiently as possible within the system. It took 9 return trips to Saddle Rock to cover all of the ground in that Canyon. Foothills/Horse Lake will probably take twice as many.
Here's what it looked like today.
This area is in full desert mode this time of year. Today was a bit windy. The trail-bed is the consistency dry concrete with 3 inches of beach sand/moon dust on top. Breezes kick up the dust. If somebody blows by you on a bike, you eat their dust... literally.
Here are a few shots from walks around Saddle Rock
This an interesting angle. When you look at it from the East side of the river (head on) it looks like a saddle, hence the name. Looking at it on the South face, it looks a bit like a shark fin.
