The Double Cross
The Crosstown Trail cuts diagonally across San Francisco, from the old Candlestick Park to Lands End. It opened in 2019. There’s now a trail that cuts across the other diagonal - from Fort Funston up to Pier 23 — called the Double Cross Trail. Yesterday, Andy and I tackled six miles of it.
Instead of starting at one of the end points, we started at a point of the trail closest to our house. Andy said it was “Camino style” — we’d met many Europeans who started their Camino from their front door, eventually linking up with one of the many “official” paths of the Camino de Santiago (a grandfather who started from his home in Western Germany stands out particularly in my memory).
We left home and joined the Double Cross at Van Ness, an unpleasant, broad, traffic-choked street. It seemed odd that a trail with a mission of connecting green spaces across San Francisco would choose a route down a decidedly not green street, but it does take you past the world’s most claustrophobic Burger King Drive Thru (you basically drive through a building) and past City Hall and the War Memorial Opera House and all of the other giant cultural and political institutions of the city, so maybe that was the point.
After a few blocks, we turned down Hayes, part of which was blocked off for what I can best describe as a dog street fair. There were booths for adoption and natural dog food and doggie massage and little matching bandanas for dogs and dog owners. San Francisco famously has more dogs than children, so I suppose the depth and breadth of dog offerings shouldn’t have surprised me.
We winded our way through the neighborhood, passing the Korea Center, which featured banners of Korea’s most important export, BTS, and continued up to Alamo Square (site of the Full House house) where someone had chalked “Summer! (is here)” onto the pavement. It’s true. Labor Day is traditionally the start of summer in San Francisco. The gloom and cold of June-August, which nobody likes except for businesses that sell sweatshirts to tourists, is replaced by glorious sun and temperatures in the 70s. The 70s! Labor Day weekend might be the last hurrah of summer for most of the country, but for us, it’s the first.
Then it was down to Duboce Park and back up a block’s worth of steep stairs to Buena Vista Park. Unlike many of the hill parks in San Francisco, Buena Vista is covered in trees. The shade was a welcome relief.
My favorite part of Buena Vista is the spectacular little glimpses that you see through the trees.
Climbing up to the top of Buena Vista brought back more memories of the Camino, specifically how much Andy hates climbing up hills. “They purposefully picked the hilliest route for this trail” he grumbled. This from a man who’s suggestion for visitors to San Francisco is to “pick two hills and walk from one to other” but I suppose we’re all a bundle of contradictions.
The climb up Buena Vista is steep but short and we were soon headed downhill for a bit before taking a slightly uphill ramble through the beautiful houses of Upper Terrace (a rather confusing name for a street). Then we cut up a narrow flight of stairs decorated with paintings.
The steps popped us out in front of Mt. Olympus Park, a tiny park dominated by a giant stone structure, which looks like the base of a statue. Indeed, there used to be a statute there, called the Triumph of Light. It was a twelve foot tall Goddess of Liberty with a torch in one hand an a sword in the other, her feet stomping on a defeated man who was the “personification of evil.”
The city looked different back in the late 1880s when Adolph Sutro had the statute erected. Mt. Olympus was roughly the geographic center of San Francisco, but the land around it was undeveloped and treeless. This allowed the light of the torch of the Goddess of Liberty (yes, the torch actually lit up) to be seen for miles, which ended up confusing ships navigating through the Golden Gate into the Bay, sending them crashing into rocks. Eventually the statute started to fall apart and it was removed in the 1950s. Nobody seems to know what happened to it. Now, there’s just an empty pedestal and beautiful views of the city.
After taking a rest, we ventured down some steps off Mt. Olympus and twisted our way up Carmel Street, home to a lovely statute, before turning onto Belgrave Avenue, which dead ends into Tank Hill Park. The last house on the street had installed a new fence and the air smelled like cedar. We paused before climbing up the hill to watch a giant bird of prey drift along the air currents, spiraling higher above the city.
Tank Hill has magnificent views of the city and this small park was surprisingly busy with people enjoying the day. A bit towards the center of the park is a giant round concrete pad where a water tank used to stand — hence the name “Tank Hill.”
We climbed off the hill and quickly began another ascent up what would turn out to be our final hill of the day — Twin Peaks. Usually Twin Peaks is shrouded in some kind of fog.
But today, it was bright and sunny, offering incredible views of the entire Bay Area - Mount Diablo and the Golden Gate Bridge and the cargo ships floating in the Bay. Families and couples were out, doing photo shoots with the sweeping views as a perfect backdrop. Luckily the Double Cross does not force you to go to the tippy-top of the Twin Peaks — we got to stick to the broad road, closed to cars.
After a rest under the shade of the one little clump of trees on these hills, we headed down, past the scrubby brush and French Broom (which reminded me of the gorse in Wales) and the silly Seussian plants that will be flowerless until the rains come. After a restorative burrito bought on Portola Drive, we headed to the bus stop and home.
