Does a thruhike have to be in the wilderness?
We “thruhiked” San Francisco! It was an experiment: is it possible to recreate the thruhike experience, but in one day in an urban setting? This was completely different from our usual wilderness thruhikes, but in many ways it was exactly the same. Before getting into what that was like, here’s how and why we ended up doing it.
Our first ultra-long walk changed us. We spent 4.5 months on the Pacific Crest Trail, in remote and mountainous areas most of the time, making our way from the Mexico/US border to the Canada/US border. It was the wilderness trip of our dreams, but it was so much more than that. It gave us:
- A sense of accomplishment: working toward a big goal every single day.
- A strong community: strangers turn into lifelong friends out there.
- Extreme simplicity: walk, eat, drink, sleep. Nothing else.
But our lives aren’t compatible with spending 100% of our time on long-distance thruhikes. This got us thinking: maybe it’s possible to do a thruhike without being in the wilderness! A sense of accomplishment, community, and simplicity are all possible to find in urban life, and since walking is where we’ve found them the easiest, why not walk a city for a mini thruhike!? We’re starting with San Francisco and already eyeing Los Angeles next!
We live not too far from San Francisco, and a bit of Googling led us to the Crosstown Trail: An approximately 20-mile route across San Francisco. We’ve explored the city embarrassingly little, so we loaded up our day-packs and headed up! Here’s the GPS track of our trek:
Our “resupply” stops were at restaurants and coffee shops instead of at post offices. The people we met were the residents of San Francisco instead of long-distance hikers. The landmarks we observed were historical and cultural instead of famous national parks. And the “trail magic” we found were free little libraries instead of strangers at road crossings handing out beer and snacks!
Like our walks from Mexico to Canada, thruhiking San Francisco gave us a feel for a place you just can’t get from a car. The route started on a pier in the San Francisco Bay, where we met fisherman who were having an unsuccessful day (been there 😅). We enjoyed a neighborhood coffee shop and met a local baker while she was dropping off the day’s supply of goodies! We heard a local band putting on a free street concert. We were routed through SO MUCH green space. We had no idea San Francisco had so many parks! We learned about rose season… because we missed the bloom despite walking through a giant rose garden. We ate at a remarkable hole-in-the-wall restaurant we never would have set as a tourist destination! And we finished the hike on the Pacific Ocean, just as the sun was setting over the ruins of Sutro Baths.
On this trip we saw San Francisco’s beauty, its problems, its food, and its people, all up close and personal. Cities are a patchwork of human spaces that you miss when you close the car door and drive in a capsule from point A to point B. The space in between, that you can only find while walking, is where there’s magic!
For the full recap of our San Francisco thruhike, here it is in video format:
Really enjoyed watching this hike.