Los Gatos Creek Trail (North) 2015-04-23

Taking a break from my Walkabout SF bay project, I took Apollo to Campbell Park by Los Gatos Creek Trail, parking at the same place where we hiked the middle section of this trail in February - Campbell & Gilman Ave. The northern portion that we hiked today runs from Campbell to San Jose and ends at Meridian Ave.

From Campbell Park, turn left after crossing the bridge and follow the trail north. As with the other segments, this is a paved trail in an urban setting and is popular with cyclists, joggers with strollers, and dog owners. 

After crossing a long wooden bridge in the first mile, you will also go through four underpasses. After another three-fourths of a mile, you will reach Blackford School. As always, Apollo was a very willing subject for my photographs.

We continued further, crossing over the bridge, and went as far as the trail would go - to Meridian Ave. This section is about three-fourths of a mile from Blackford School. There is nothing much to add to the description from before.

We turned back and made our way to Campbell Park. If you want some variety, I'd recommend taking the dirt trail that runs close enough to the blacktop trail once you cross the bridge on the return. This dirt trail veers close to the creek at a couple of spots - Apollo didn't get to jump into the creek even though he thought he was going to! At one point, it makes an interesting climb over rocks before joining the paved trail again. I'd say this dirt trail section is probably no more than half a mile, if at that.

With this, we've completed the entire Los Gatos Creek Trail, running from Meridian Ave in San Jose all the way to Lexington Reservoir and passing through Campbell and Los Gatos - the middle section on Feb 7 and southern section on Feb 9.

The 5 mile out and back hike we did today is really easy, and we completed it in about 90 minutes. Here is a link to the map of the hike.

Update 2016-01-27

Apollo and I walked the north segment after long break. It was good to see the recent rains had resulted in lush green grass by the trail. I just realized that this stretch is away from Hwy 17 and thus got much less road noise compared the middle section that we hike more frequently.

It was also good to see the efforts of South Bay Creek Coalition resulting in a much cleaner creek side. There was also an art work to top the clean up efforts of this group.

Apollo and I made excellent time, running a reasonable portion of this 5 mile out and back trail. The cool, crisp winter morning provided ideal running conditions and I was glad that I could actually take advantage of it, shaving 19 minutes off how long it took us the last time we did this walk.

Here are some more pictures  from our hikes.

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