To continue my New Years Resolution to try to do new hikes to start the new year, I set my eyes on Foothills Park down in Palo Alto.

This park was only open the Palo Alto residents until December 2020, when the city opened it up to all after years of complaints and lawsuits.

And it became so popular, they had to start closing it mid-day on the weekends due to overcrowding. With that in mind, I decided to do a mid-week visit. It was quite a long drive (over an hour), but with the light traffic in the Bay Area due to COVID it wasn’t a big deal to drive down during what would normally be commute time.

After looking over the possible trails and routes, I decided on doing the big 7.7 mile Los Trancos Trail. It’s a big loop covering the western side of the park. It was a nice sunny day, if a bit chilly when I started.

I started near the visitor center and the first part of the trail was somewhat steep as I climbed from Las Trampas Valley. I did a double take when I saw that name, since I’ve visited Las Trampas Region Park near Danville many times and this park was nowhere close to that.

Once I got up the initial climb, there were some nice views around the park before the trail started to snake along the back ridge of the park. Looking at the map, I had thought this was more like the top of a ridge, but it was mostly along a valley separating the park from some large mansions. It was a long, but enjoyable hike before it climbed steeply up to the top of the ridge. I took a break before starting the climb. 🙂

When I reached the top of the ridge, I was rewarded with spectacular vies of the entire park, the mountains to the West, and the Bay to the East. There are always times like this in any hike that make it all worth the trouble.

After enjoying the view and another break, I started down to the Valley where I started. It was a long winding decent, which mean tit wasn’t that steep. Nice change from the two steep climbs I had already had to do that day.

Once I completed the Los Trancos Trail, I thought about hiking up to Boronda Lake and then up to Vista Hill or even out all the way to a point called Bobcat Point. It wasn’t too long of a detour, but I decided the views wouldn’t be that different and the 8 miles I had already hiked that day was enough.

I did drive up to Vista Hill and saw the view anyway. Sometimes it’s easy to decide not to do a hike when you can just drive up to the high point. Kind of like Pikes Peak in Colorado: I wasn’t motivated to climb that 14er since I could just drive up it. I’m just a lazy couch potato sometimes. 🙂

Since I was on that side of the Bay, I decided to pick up some fresh dungeness crab direct from the fishing boats.