Hidden Walk in Sausalito

Jan and I love to hike in beautiful open space areas like the East Bay Regional Parks, Joaquin Miller Park, or Mount Tamalpais, but sometimes we also enjoy exploring urban areas. The residential areas of the East Bay and Marin are loaded with pedestrian paths and stairways laid out in the early 20th century. We’ve learned about most of these walks by following directions in books like, Hidden Walks in the East Bay and Marin by Stephen Altschuler. We probably wouldn’t give the book more than about three stars, but Stephen’s introduced us to a lot of cool places.

Base Map from Hidden Walks in the East Bay & Marin by Stephen Altschuler

We enjoyed this 3.3 mile walk, described as Hi/Lo Sausalito. We started our day with lunch at Swede’s Beach, a tiny public beach dedicated to the memory of Fire Captain Ralph K. “Swede” Pedersen. The red path on the map shows our journey to the top of the hillside and yellow shows the return trip. The views of San Francisco, Alcatraz, and the Bay Bridge are spectacular.

We walked up a rustic set of stone steps called Cable Roadway, a steep and scenic path under a canopy of trees. After getting tangled up in the book’s directions a couple of times, we found our way to a beautiful wooden sculpture of Saint Francis nestled in the oak woodland. Nearby, is a charming public playground with an old community building and open public restroms, an amenity we often wish for on urban walks.

Several more paths, stairs, and roadways led us back down to a little park by the Bay. After the walk we had time to wander around the village for a while before dinner at Trident. Trident is the subject for next week’s blog. Until then, are you planning any walks?