Los Gatos Creek: From San Jose to Blossom Hill From Richard Katz's
Skating Unrinked book, published in paperback by HarperCollinsWest in 1994. Or was it '95? If you are not reading this on a screen, stop reading and head to www.Amazon.com. Thanx. Richard Katz = katz@frogojt.com. email
If you didn't really want to read a rollerskating trails book: Back to Richard Katz's Homepage
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Chapter losgat2
Los Gatos Creek: From San Jose to Blossom Hill
Maybe the best part of this trail for my family is that it's on the way to Santa Cruz. Maybe the Los Gatos Creek Trail will never be a destination trail. Maybe it's more like a Holiday Inn along the way than a Mauna Kea at the end. But this very local-oriented recreation trail has a lot of personality along it's six miles; it's a path that you might want to take a whole day and get to know better. The first time you see Vasona Reservoir in Vasona Lake Park, for example, you will be surprised at how nice a place a local city park can be. And skating around Vasona Lake is about perfect for beginners and kids.
How to Get There by Car from Interstate 880:
Take Interstate 880 south of the junction with Interstate 280 in San Jose where it becomes Highway 17. Exit Highway 17 at Hamilton Avenue, turning east on Hamilton. Go one long block to South Bascom Avenue and take a right, south on Bascom. Go around the back of the Pruneyard shopping center with a right on East Campbell Avenue. This takes you under the freeway. Go past the Campbell Inn, past Poplar Avenue, and at the unsigned intersection with Gilman take a left at the stoplight. When you see the sign "Par Course Parking" take a left into a free parking lot. You are in the parking area of Campbell Park.
What It's Like:
The whole trail is very parklike. You start off by the playground and picnic grounds of Campbell Park, where there is a ramp going up to the street level. Take it up to Campbell Avenue, and go right across the bridge to the other side of Los Gatos Creek. Turn down the ramp on the other side, and make a 180 degree turn to your right. You are now on the trail going north, headed out of Campbell for the City of San Jose.
This part of the trail is uncrowded even on Sunday mornings. It's all underpasses, under South Bascom and a number of other heavily traveled thoroughfares. The pavement is quite good asphalt. After you cross under Hamilton Avenue and get into San Jose's city limits, it's even landscaped.
The landscaped trail is proudly marked with posts bearing the insignia "Los Gatos Creek Trail -- City of San Jose Trail System." Note that this section of the trail has a number of underpasses that were hard to build. The cantilevered one near Apple Computer's Campbell Campus is especially noteworthy.
This beautiful project ends all too soon at Willow Street and Norman Avenue, near Leigh Avenue and Hamilton.
Check out the custom car wash place right by the trail that's shaped like a paddlewheel riverboat. Inspect the cars coming out the other end, and see if those aren't the cleanest cars you ever saw. Hamilton Plaza shopping center with Starbucks and the Bread of Life Alternative Food Store is diagonally across from the carwash.
The Willow Glen Trails Committee refers to the section of trail you are on as the Million Dollar Mile. It cost a lot to engineer and build the undercrossings for Leigh Avenue, Bascom, Hamilton, and Highway 17 given the steep banks of the creek. The car culture gets denser and denser in the direction the trail is going toward downtown San Jose; perhaps this trail just collided with it. The end of the line is just north of Leigh Avenue,
at Norman Avenue and Willow Street.
When you get back to Campbell Park, and you want to skate some more, you can skate south on either side of the creek, on levee roads that are actually Santa Clara Valley Water District service roads. On either side, when you get to the first big dam, be prepared to negotiate a steep hill and a bicycle maze. This might even be a good place to turn around if you have little kids and they've had enough already. They will have already covered about six miles on the north end of the trail.
The trail continues south on the western side of the creek, running between paan urban park and the freeway. There is some bad pavement. You are now in Los Gatos, cruising through a part of town called Vasona Junction, on pavement that varies from smooth to bad. Just before Lark Avenue comes the sign "Steep Hill". Ex way down atit the trail and go up to Lark (too steep here), cross the street carefully in the middle of the block (or cross at the light way down at La Canada Court) and get back on the trail on the eastern side of the creek, still going south.
After an amazing hairpin turn at the top of a hill, you're in Vasona Lake Park at Vasona Reservoir. This is a terrific city park; check out all the little trails that go off to the sides, leading to ponds with swans, a kids' railroad, and public rest rooms. Our trail is across the street from the Lake to the left. Follow the crosswalk. There is no automobile traffic.
The trail ends at Blossom Hill Road, ahead to the left of the lake. It may be a bit confusing, because there is a vestigial end of the trail further ahead that even has an underpass for Blossom Hill. That little paved fossil doesn't go anywhere just now, though in the future it will grow all the way to St Joseph's College.
From its beginning near Leigh Avenue to its end at Blossom Hill, the Los Gatos trail is about six miles long.
Places to Eat:
At the north end of the trail, across the intersection from the Classic Carwash with the riverboat motif, there is a pair of eating establishments, clustered together in middle of the Hamilton Plaza shopping center like binary stars. On the one hand you have the Bread of Life Alternative Food Store -- bulk stuff on the outside, very cheap; pricey stuff on the inside, like organic meat and veggies; and a sandwich counter. Maybe because of the aura of wholesomeness and hype that pervades the place, everything tastes excellent. Roll on in. Next door is a Starbucks coffee shop. You can spend some of your wholesome aura on a dose of caffeine and pastry.
Public Transportation:
The Santa Clara County Transportation Agency SCCTA 27 line stops where the Los Gatos Trail ends, at Blossom Hill Road near Roberts Road. The 63 line stops near the beginning of the trail.
San Jose has an extensive public transit system, including a help line at 408 370 9191 for information about Los Gatos.
Ratings:
Path Surface = ** (some ***)
Public Transit Access = ****
Surroundings = ***
Level of Difficulty = EASY north of Camden Dam; CHALLENGING to the south.
Overall Rating = **
Length = about six miles one way
Other trails to check out in the neighborhood:
Coyote Creek
Bayfront Park Recreation Trail in Menlo Park:
Take the Marsh Road exit from Highway 101 in Menlo Park. The entrance to Bayfront Park lies just a few hundred feet north of the freeway, where the Bayfront Expressway turns into Haven Avenue. Just before you enter Bayfront Park, look for a skating trail running south.
The trail runs parallel and adjacent to the Bayfront Expressway for a mile and a half. It's noisy. When the trail approaches Willow Road, it hooks to the left through a marsh and quiets down for a very pleasant spell, which ends at a staging area just off Highway 84; then reappears on the northbound side of Highway 84 (the approach to the Dumbarton Bridge.) Now this is the truly interesting part: If you cross Highway 84, you can continue on that trail on the northbound side, heading to your left, toward the Bay. You can then skate all the way to the Dumbarton Bridge. You can even skate over the bridge (a steep narrow concrete challenge.) You can then skate for several miles further yet, on a completely unused road parallel to Highway 84 on the other side of the bridge. You can skate nearly as far as the toll plaza, several miles away.
Unfortunately, most of this is next to a noisy highway.
Shoreline Amphitheater trail system:
Like the Bayfront trail above, this trail is a mere hop, skip and jump from the freeway. Take the San Antonio Road exit from Highway 101, and follow the signs to San Antonio Road North. Drive two short blocks north on San Antonio Road, where it comes to an end at the intersection with Terminal Boulevard. Park anywhere. Look for a green painted gate, and a handsome interpretive plaque announcing that this is a Nature trail. You can see Shoreline Amphitheater from the plaque.
This trail through a marsh is about ??????? miles long, and it was indeed paved as a trail, not as a road. It's smooth; quite a bit of sand gets on the asphalt, however. The surroundings rate at least four stars; five, if you're into marshes.
In addition to this one asphalt trail through the marshland, there are also several miles of concrete paths nearby, threaded through the deluxe campuses of some of Silicon Valley's heaviest hitters, all within a stone's throw of Shoreline Amphitheater.
10/10/96
Note from the Author: Haven't put in links to the other chapters yet.
From Richard Katz's Skating Unrinked book, published in paperback by HarperCollinsWest in 1994. Or was it '95? If you are not reading this on a screen, stop reading and head to www.Amazon.com. Thanx. Richard Katz = katz@frogojt.com. email
Back to Richard Katz's Homepage
If you want to go back to the Table of Contents of Skating Unrinked, Back to TOC