The largest lake in Golden Gate Park serves as the park's main reservoir. There’s a boathouse on the north side where rowboats and paddleboats can be rented.
Strawberry Hill, the island surrounded by Stow Lake, is about 430’, according to one source, and the highest elevation in the park. Two pedestrian bridges connect the island with the mainland. The hill got its name from the wood strawberry, Fragaria vesca, that used to grow here. Huntington Falls and the Chinese Pavilion, a gift from Taipei in 1981, are on the east shore.
Various birds, ducks, turtles, squirrels, gulls, and geese. One of the geese was “speaking” to me; they’re really tame around here. Didn’t feed any of the animals myself today but lots of people do this.
If you take the stairway up from the steppingstones at the south foot of Huntington Falls, there are 125 steps to the summit. Counted 111 steps for the north stairway. Above the short wood peoplebridge that crosses the falls, the north and south green-railed stairways merge into one stairway that climbs the rest of the way to the summit, near the reservoir.
These two main stairways are concrete and wood, twisty, and steep in places. The pics are of the north stairway.
Another stairway, mostly wood, starts down from from the north side and turns. These steps are widely spaced with some steep spots (missing steps): counted 62 here.
At the summit again after climbing the second (south) stairway back up, continued on a trail past the reservoir and the ruins of the Sweeney Observatory that was up here from 1891 until 1906 when the quake destroyed it.
The trail circles the hill and took me back down to the Roman Bridge (1893) where I started. I like to view this bridge from above.
(Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. and John F. Kennedy Dr. near 19th Ave.)
Strawberry Hill, the island surrounded by Stow Lake, is about 430’, according to one source, and the highest elevation in the park. Two pedestrian bridges connect the island with the mainland. The hill got its name from the wood strawberry, Fragaria vesca, that used to grow here. Huntington Falls and the Chinese Pavilion, a gift from Taipei in 1981, are on the east shore.
Various birds, ducks, turtles, squirrels, gulls, and geese. One of the geese was “speaking” to me; they’re really tame around here. Didn’t feed any of the animals myself today but lots of people do this.
If you take the stairway up from the steppingstones at the south foot of Huntington Falls, there are 125 steps to the summit. Counted 111 steps for the north stairway. Above the short wood peoplebridge that crosses the falls, the north and south green-railed stairways merge into one stairway that climbs the rest of the way to the summit, near the reservoir.
These two main stairways are concrete and wood, twisty, and steep in places. The pics are of the north stairway.
Another stairway, mostly wood, starts down from from the north side and turns. These steps are widely spaced with some steep spots (missing steps): counted 62 here.
At the summit again after climbing the second (south) stairway back up, continued on a trail past the reservoir and the ruins of the Sweeney Observatory that was up here from 1891 until 1906 when the quake destroyed it.
The trail circles the hill and took me back down to the Roman Bridge (1893) where I started. I like to view this bridge from above.
(Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. and John F. Kennedy Dr. near 19th Ave.)
Strawberry Hill stairway
Strawberry Hill stairway alongside Huntington Falls
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