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| Belgatos Park |
Heintz and Santa Rosa Open Spaces are maintained by the town of Los Gatos. The trails within these open spaces can be accessed from Belgatos Park, a nice neighborhood park at the end of Belgatos Rd in Los Gatos, off Blossom Hill Rd. Parking is available at Belgatos Park.
The trails in these open spaces are interconnected, although forming a good hiking loop is not easy, unless you are open to walking by the neighborhood streets. Not necessarily wanting to do that, Apollo and I walked the length and breadth of both open spaces which amounted to an out & back hike except for a mini-loop I was able to fit in.
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| Santa Rosa trail |
Santa Rosa Open Space is right behind Belgatos Park. The Ridge trail as well as a fire road will lead you to Santa Rosa trail from the parking lot. We started our hike by Santa Rosa trail which runs from Belgatos Park to Santa Rosa Dr, a distance of about 3/4 mile.
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| Sky trail |
The wide dirt trail winds up gradually, first comes to an intersection marked Shannon Rd. We kept right at this junction and reached the Valley View/Sky trail junction next. Valley View trail runs from this junction to Regent Dr, a distance of about a mile and a quarter. We stayed on Sky trail on the way forward and returned by Valley View trail to do the mini-loop I alluded to.
Sky trail passes a open space with a picnic bench on the left that offers excellent views of the valley. The short trail joins back Valley View trail around the mile mark of our hike. This uphill stretch involved climbing about 500 feet.
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| Valley View trail |
From here, Valley View trail descends gently over the next 3/4 mile to the entrance by Regent Dr. Before turning back from here, we also hiked the Vista trail, little more than half a mile out and back. Vista trail does offer some nice views from the top, but I felt that other spots in the park bettered those.
We walked the entire stretch of Valley View trail on the way back. In this stretch, there are couple of excellent views of the valley, just as the trail's name indicates, including a spot with a park bench overlooking the valley.
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| Ridge trail |
Back on Santa Rosa trail, we also hiked the 1/2 mile to Santa Rosa Dr. And walked the entire stretch of this trail, back to Belgatos Park. And to wrap up our hike, we also walked the Ridge trail that runs from the parking lot to Harwood Ct, yet another out and back exercise.
As you probably observe, the trails are all somewhat short, but covering the entire park, our hike ended up a respectable 5+ miler with about 1100 feet of climbing. There are no printed maps available. You can print one from here if you want.
More pictures from the hike.
#Hiking #HikingWithDogs #BelgatosPark #HeintzOpenSpace #SantaRosaOpenSpace
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