A Cheater's Guide to the Bay Area Ridge Trail

a hike through past, present, and future

For the past few weeks I’ve followed the Bay Area Ridge Trail, connecting the many nature areas surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area.

Starting at my friend Vince’s door in San Francisco, I walked south along the hills looming over Silicon Valley, dipped through San Jose, traversed the east bay skyline above Oakland, zig-zagged through Marin County, and finally crossed the Golden Gate Bridge to return to my starting point.

Along the way I encountered hawks, goats, rabbits, horses, ducks, coyotes, snakes, wild turkeys, and wild pigs. I sweated up hills and smashed PB&Js and devoured audiobooks and reordered playlists and flirted over Whatsapp. I passed childhood homes, visited friends from 20 years ago, and became “that guy” walking through dense urban areas with short-shorts and hiking poles.

I hiked for 14 days and took five rest days. I crashed on the couches of friends and strangers, camped legally for one night, and stealth camped for three. One evening, happily ensconced on a grassy hill above a protected watershed, I feasted on bahn mi and kettle chips and pinot noir and junior mints, overlooking millions of people within a 10-mile radius, utterly alone.

I questioned my motives. I almost quit. I wondered whether not quitting was a sign of mental disorder. I contemplated how to spend my forties, contemplated how people build lives in some of the most expensive cities in the US, contemplated the life I might have lived if I stayed here after college.

Mostly, I walked. And I learned a few things.

Day 1 photo above San Francisco, by Vince Harrington

First things first: the Bay Area Ridge Trail is not a “trail.”

If it were like the John Muir Trail or Appalachian Trail, the Bay Area Ridge Trail would have a clear starting and ending point, with a continuous line of travel between. You could carefully plan, economize, and execute. You could put your head down, put the miles in, and follow a little line until it ends.

But the Bay Area Ridge Trail is not a trail.

While researching the possibility of a Ridge Trail thru-hike, I found this handy map. Despite having no idea who created it, I fell in love with it immediately—because it connected the entire Ridge Trail with one nice, clean, little red line.

The theoretical thru-hike, the actual trail, and what I did

I should have known better. There are real maps out there, like those created by the non-profit that manages the trail. Maps that unambiguously state: This trail is not complete. This trail is fragmented. This trail is complicated.

But that’s not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to believe that life could be connected, uncomplicated, whole. I wanted to believe I could follow a little red line to victory. So I ignored the evidence and flattened reality to fit my image of perfection.

Something else I wanted to believe: that this might be like the Camino de Santiago. That I might encounter a pleasant hybrid of city and country, with ample food, accommodation, and friendly hikers en route. That I might call this the Camino de San Francisco. How badly I wanted to use that phrase!

But this is not Spain. It’s California. It’s day hikers and dog walkers and mountain bikers, Airpods in, politely avoiding eye contact. It’s thousands of feet of elevation change between the trail and the nearest food and water sources. It’s a land of incredible wealth, few campsites, and virtually no hostels. It’s flood-damaged, poison oak-choked, and shockingly empty most days.

By day four, I’m struggling with trail closures and private property restrictions and barbed-wire fences. I’m stinky and gross after one night of sleeping out. I am privileged and unhoused. I want to quit.

But I continue hiking because I want to see the friends I said I’d visit. I continue hiking because I’ve said I’m going to do this. Because I would feel embarrassed to quit.

I continue because I’m not sure what else to do with this time, because going on adventures like these are how I convince myself that I’m doing something of value, how I tell myself that I am somehow unique.

To survive, I cheat.

The little red line tells me to connect trail sections by road-walking. It tells me to follow Skyline Boulevard, with its racing sports cars and lack of shoulder. It tells me to walk traffic-choked boulevards through San Jose and Fremont. Instead, I Uber around.

The little red line tells me to hop fences, to cross “Keep Out” signs. Sometimes I do, and it’s fine. Other times I’m afraid, and I skip. One time, in Marin County, I am caught: trapped on a high fire road, unsuccessfully hiding from a passing pickup truck. The driver stops and fires a warning shot into the air. I emerge, explain my mission, and admit my mistake. The rancher takes pity and lets me continue.

Staying with friends in cities along the way, I’m offered rides to/from trailheads, which I gratefully accept. Which means: conforming to my friends’ schedules, accepting delays, and realizing that I don’t have enough time to make it as far as I want that day. Which means: yet more skipping.

I’m stuck on the idea that this is a “trail.” I’m stuck on the idea that I must walk every inch, that failing to do so says something about my character, my moral fiber, my capacity for commitment. So I cheat—and I feel ashamed.

I begin to notice the little red line in other parts of life.

I stay with friends around my age who have children and nice houses. Again, I feel ashamed. Why? Because I have diverged from the little red line of marriage, mortgage, and procreation. Because I’m Ubering around that part of life. Because I’m avoiding the commandment to settle, nest, and take on more responsibility.

None of my friends actually say this to me. Many openly admire my life. I am the one creating the little red line, condensing it from the cultural vapor, accepting a map made by an unknown author.

Whenever I get back on trail, I return to hike as fast as you can for as long as you can mode. I do not linger. I do not read my book in a grassy meadow at midday, as I dreamed I might. I take few breaks. I wear myself down. Why? Because this is how you win at life: by pushing hard, economizing, maximizing. To move slowly is to fail to traverse the little red line with all possible haste.

Nevermind how this directly contradicts my educational philosophy, how it’s not what I advise others to do, how it reveals my disconnect between dream and reality.

Some of these little red lines are deeply buried, I realize. Despite my avowed open-mindedness, I am subject to herd mentalities. Where is the unsubscribe link?

Passing by nice houses in Redwood City and San Jose and Novato, I ask, What do people even do in there? What would I do with all that space, all that stuff? What does a happy family life even look like? I’m having a Japhy moment. For this, I have no little red line; I have no map whatsoever.

Between the sweating and struggling and doubting, I find hope and pride.

Ever since I was a teen, driving my brother and myself between parent’s houses in Bakersfield and the Bay Area, I dreamed of hiking through the empty golden hills and gnarled oak trees and mysterious dirt roads of northern California, the ones I spied from car windows. Now, I am doing it.

After the initial hard stretch and my first day off, I realize that I’m actually well prepared for the unique challenges of the Ridge Trail: the shifting between city and country, the logistical juggling, the constant demand for flexibility. All my backpacking and couchsurfing and teen-trip-planning over the past 15 years has led me to this. I’m not here for the wrong reasons; it just takes time to adjust.

I walk above the rainbow tunnel through which I held my breath as a child. I recall the summer morning Marin fog breaking into sunny afternoon brilliance. I traverse the famous trail I shared with so many friends and lovers and banana slugs. I pass the gravity well of Berkeley, where my young atoms were rearranged. Despite my unrootedness, I am not rootless. I sense a sense of place.

I stay with Bay Area homeschooling luminaries and chat up their eager kids. I do a coaching session with a teen unschooler in Oakland. A kindergarten teacher / jiu-jitsu black belt / partner dancer / aspiring edu-revolutionary invites me to crash in his apartment on the recommendation of a Facebook follower. A fellow hiker who found me through my online writing joins me at a campground, and brings me burritos and chocolate; we discuss religious fundamentalism as the sun sets over the Pacific.¹ My work life bleeds into my personal life, and I’m thankful for it.

I think about becoming a parent, then I think about becoming a monk. (Parenting is a bootcamp for personal growth says my friend Meagan; could the same be said for monastic life?) My friends teach me pickleball, and I reminisce over 90s computer games. (Am I a hero in my own role-playing game?) I declare myself a professional wanderer one moment and a Christopher McCandless poseur the next. I laugh at my multiple personalities.

A likely-homeless man drives golf balls across a San Jose bike path, expertly lobbing them back into a fenced golf range; two other men take a break from collecting cans in shopping carts to join him for a few wild swings. A woman arranges a booth with the giant words Marry Me! at an east bay trailhead. I ford a flooded section of paved trail in San Jose, hot feet relieved by cold creek, greeted by a pair of muttering ducks. A coyote and I surprise each other on a grassy bend in the trail. My friends’ young children joyfully crawl over me on couches and in backyards. These snapshots snowball, accrete, compound. I begin smiling on trail, seemingly without cause.

I accept a few things.

I accept that I am very idealistic and somewhat naïve.

I accept that I am not a hardcore thru-hiker; I do it for the people.

I accept that I am currently a bit lost, adrift, directionless—and I like it that way.

I accept that I do not put all my eggs in one basket, relationship-wise, for reasons that are increasingly clear.

I accept that I may not be able to slow down—on trail or in life—until I experience serious illness, injury, or immobility.

I accept that I am desperately in love with California, and even if I never live here again, even if it’s only a long-distance relationship, we will remain in love.

Happy trails,
—Blake

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Fast Facts / Q&A

• Did you thru-hike the Bay Area Ridge Trail? Nope! Didn’t you read the title? This is a cheater’s guide. (Also, see my planning post for context.)

• How far did you hike? I’m not sure, I didn’t calculate daily mileage. Maybe 250 miles? With a lot of up and down. (Here are my waypoints, if you’d like to make an educated guess. Alternating colors indicate different hiking days.)

• What gear did you take? ➡️ Packing list

• What did you eat? My lovely friends fed me breakfast and dinner most of the time. On trail I enjoyed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chips, bars, apples, and chocolate. I did not bring cooking equipment. Before camping I grabbed a prepared sandwich. In South San Jose I detoured to grab a really, truly, excellent pollo super burrito.

• Was there drinking water on trail? Not really. I usually carried 2-4 liters. The Ridge Trail above Oakland/Berkeley has the most frequent water spigots.

• Bathroom situation? I always found toilets/outhouses when needed 🙏🏼🚽

• Favorite sections? Bolinas Ridge (Bolinas-Fairfax Road to Pan Toll), Russian Ridge, Almaden-Quicksilver, East Bay Skyline (Redwood to Wildcat), and the Woodrat Trail in Fernandez Ranch.

• Hardest moment? Walking through a head-high field of pollinating brush in Mission Peak Regional Preserve, getting completely coated in pollen, and suffering an allergy attack (constant sneezing, itchy skin and eyes, pollen mixing with sweat to attack every orifice). I could have avoided this fate by taking a parallel road… but I wanted to follow the little red line. Beware the little red line!

• I’m thinking about hiking the entire Bay Area Ridge Trail! How do you suggest I do it… more…erm… how do I say it… intelligently than you did? Have a dedicated friend follow you with a vehicle, picking you up and dropping you off at trailheads each day, shuttling you back to food/shower/bed each night. Yeah, that’d be nice.

• Should I cross private property or camp where I’m not supposed to? No, you should not cross private property or camp where you’re not supposed to.

• More pretty pictures, please. ➡️ Trail album

1. This hiker, whose name is Valjean, ended up writing an excellent piece about our discussion that evening.