Granite Regional Park

The Granite Regional Park is part of the old rock quarry in the Power Inn area, just south of Jackson Highway, behind the Sacramento County Department of Health and Human Services. The park itself has an artificial turf soccer field, a skate park, a fishing pond, a walking trail, and a dog park. The site is used as a cross country course for track meets, but I like to use it as a quick lunch-time MTB track. There are a variety of routes and distances you can use, and all of them link back to the main fire roads through the quarry. You can see on the map I tracked, that some of the loops were cut off by high water.

I've uploaded a map of the 3 mile cross country running course the school district uses for additional reference.

Note: The only access I could find to the trails is through the gate near the Northeast corner of the skate park.

High School Cross Country Course: Download
KML file: Download
City of Sacramento Parks Page: Link

 
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Folsom Lake SRA

In pursuit of mapping out a trail around Folsom Lake, one of the most frustrating parts, was I could not find the legitimate state parks map online. It took a visit to the toll booth at the Granite Bay boat launch area to secure this puppy, and although it's not accompanied  by a GPS file, it's the best overview map of the trails in the area I've found.

Download PDF here.

Beeks Bight / Pioneer Express Trail

Today I mapped Beeks Bight and a portion of the Pioneer Express Trail. In order to map as quickly as possible, I attempted to do this via Mountain Bike. I went under the assumption that the trail was marked "no bikes" due to a bias against the Mountain Bike culture, but after about 3 miles in, the trail is really un-ridable, and at that point we actually ditched our bikes and hiked as much of the trail as I had time for. Another 2-3 miles would have gotten me to the Rattlesnake Bar access.

Along the way, we encountered several groups of trail runners, and some beautiful scenery. I'm usually more prone to fun on a mountain bike, but this is a trail run worth doing.

Click here for full trail report.


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50/20 Inspiration

In May 2012 I'm venturing to do a 50/20 hike with the Boy Scouts. This means 50 miles of hiking over 20 hours. It's a daunting task - and after thinking about it its really like burning as many calories as you burn in 2 marathons.

BUT, the hardest thing about the hike so far is the fact that I can't find flipin sweet trails anywhere. It should be so easy to find .kml or gpx files for different hikes since everyone is logging them on their smart phones anyway, right? Nope. Everything I find is a grainy trail map from the 1960's or some trail on pavement.

So here's my plan - road rides are easy enough to find since the invention of Map My Ride, and google maps, but i plan to map all the mountain bike, hike and trails that i use near Sacramento on the American River Trail, Folsom Lake SRA, Auburn SRA and others (there are TONS of them). Feel free to contribute .kml or .gpx files, and check back here for recent trails for your local hike, run or ride.