Stairways are Heaven
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Strawberry Stairways

10/11/2013

1 Comment

 
San Francisco's Fort Funston has two long stairways and Lands End and the Presidio boast multiple long beauties, but these parks are all closed because of the shutdown since they're all part of the Golden Gate National Parks. Have been hiking other parks in the meantime.

It'd been several months since I'd visited Golden Gate Park's Strawberry Hill (the park's highest point) and Stow Lake. The last post I did for this, my favorite part of this huge park (second largest in SF after the Presidio), was in February of this year. The stairways here don't seem to be as well known as some others in SF. 

Disembarked from the N-Judah Metro at 19th Avenue and strolled downhill to Lincoln and into the park (first pic: on the trail to Stow Lake), soon to cross the 1893 stone Roman bridge (second pic) to the trail starting up Strawberry Hill (third pic).

After the first few steps, 20 or so widely spaced logs served as a stairway of sorts (pic 4) on the way up to the summit, as did another short flight of rough logs to the trail below next to the lake. 

I'll just repeat my earlier staircounts for the three stairways this time. My count for the concrete-and-wood green-railed main (north) twisty one that starts down from near the hilltop reservoir is 110 steps (pics 5 through 14) to its foot near the Chinese Pavilion and steppingstones.

Thirty-eight steps (pic 15) up on the south side of Huntington Falls (16, 17) don't go all the way up. They merge with the northside stairs where you cross the falls on one of the wood footbridges (pic 18). If you go up the south side this way, you'll get around 125 steps to the top. Didn't do it this time because there was a group of people hanging up there for a while. 

So from the foot of the main steps, curved around to the foot of the widely spaced, mostly wood stairs on the north side (61 steps, pics 19, 20, 21), then circled back around to my beginning. 


Critter sightings: last pic

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1. On the short trail to Stow Lake
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2. Roman Bridge over Stow Lake to Strawberry Hill
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3. Trail starting up Strawberry Hill
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4. Logs as widely spaced steps
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5. Starting down from the summit near the reservoir
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6. Down the main stairway
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7. Continuing down the main stairway
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8. Steeply continuing down
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9. Main steps alongside Huntington Falls
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10. Main stairway
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11. Wood steps now
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12. Main stairway
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13. Foot of the main stairway
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14. Foot of the main stairway
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15. Foot of the south stairway
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16. Huntington Falls
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17. Huntington Falls
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18. Short footbridges cross the falls
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19. Foot of the north steps
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20. Up the north stairway
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21. North steps turn at the bench ahead
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22. Stow Lake beauties
1 Comment
Sarah ANDREWS
10/20/2016 02:46:41 pm

Ok just a newbie here but if you enlarge the first photo of Huntington falls, you will see that is the painting. The oriental woman in the middle is the rocks in the middle with a slit eyes. To her direct left is the smiling rock of the man that people thought was Ronald Reagan. After I saw your photo of the log steps that are very widely spaced I thought maybe since the woman in the photo is pointing between three and four on the squares on the dress that maybe between locks three and four there is the treasure.

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    I like meandering around on San Francisco's park trails and public stairways, sometimes taking photos, and enjoying nature and the outdoors.

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