Mountain View Shoreline/Palo Alto Baylands
OTE Ratings: O6/T3/E2
Distance: 6 - 14 miles
Time: 1/2 to 1.5 hours
USGS 7.5' topo: Mountain View, CA
Description
It's mostly flat, and mostly dirt-road-width riding, but there are
some pretty fun (though short) sections of single-track and a few very
short but sorta steep hills. When I ride here, I take about an
hour-long circuitous route that goes from
Sun
out near the Shoreline
Amphitheatre, and then (eventually) out to Palo Alto Baylands park --
there is a little unofficial MTB playground
(N 37° 27' 11", W 122° 05' 39")
where you can do little
ups & downs and jumps. Egrets and avocets (and too many seagulls) are
pretty commonly seen here; we also see herons, hawks, rabbits, and
white pelicans. Occasionally, pheasant and burrowing owls.
Suicidal squirrels are a problem, and the heavy metal from the
Lollapalooza show last time was a bit unnerving.
Directions to the start
(N 37° 25' 57", W 122° 05' 12")
Take 101 to Shoreline Boulevard, in Mountain View. Head towards the bay,
passing through the entrance gate, and continue
- through the park -
to the parking lot at the end of the road, next to a small lake.
The ride
The first half of this ride is a tricky one to give directions for.
On a map, the route I take would look sorta like a big figure 'B'. I
loop through the east half of MTV Shoreline Park sorta clockwise, and
then (also clockwise) loop around the big marsh (which means, take the
paved bike trail to Palo Alto (comes out onto Faber Place, then turn
right onto Embarcadero Road), take another right to go in through Byxbee
Park
(N 37° 27' 06", W 122° 06' 08";
there is some singletrack up in there!), then out
along the Baylands trails to catch the consistent tailwind back to the
starting point).
Write me for more exact (but still possibly insufficient) detail; to
write the full description of this route took me nearly as much time
as it takes to ride it (>100 lines of text).
Update: As of 94/08/05, the authorities have ruined another stretch
of singletrack in this park, near the windsurfers' lake.
©1995-2019 Doug Landauer
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