be walked without much effort by someone who is reasonably fit. A moderate grade may cause you to slow your pace somewhat, but should not interrupt the flow of the hike. A steep grade involves a slow, steady pace, much huffing and puffing, and perhaps rest stops. For downhill travel, a gentle grade means easy walking, while moderate and steep descents require an increasing amount of caution, especially over rough terrain such as loose dirt or gravel.
Most of the trips in this book are loops or semi-loops (a loop with a significant out-and-back section.) The rest of the trips fall into two categories: out-and-back and point-to-point. Trips which are point-to-point, such as the Ohlone Wilderness Regional Trail, segments of the East Bay Skyline National Recreation Trail, and the Ramage Peak hike, involve a car shuttle; this is noted and explained in the Directions section of the route description. The few out-and-back routes either have no loop possibility, or none that is worth pursuing.
Alameda-Contra Costa Transit (AC Transit) runs buses to some of the parklands in the East Bay; these buses often connect to Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) stations. If you plan to use public transit, it is best to check current AC Transit (www.actransit.org) and BART (www.bart.gov) schedules for routes, days of operation, and frequency of trains and buses. The Bay Area Travelers Information System phone number is (510) 817-1717.
Bayside
◆ Point Pinole Regional Shoreline ◆
BAY VIEW TRAIL
Length: 5.2 miles
Time: 2 to 3 hours
Rating: Moderate
Regulations: EBRPD; fees for parking and dogs; dogs not allowed on fishing pier and must be leashed at all times.
Facilities: Picnic tables, water, toilet, phone, children’s play area. A shuttle van from the parking area to a fishing pier at the end of Point Pinole runs daily except Tuesdays and Wednesdays; there is a small fee, but seniors, the disabled, and children under age 6 ride free. Dogs are not allowed on the shuttle. The shuttle leaves the parking area at half past every hour beginning at 7:30 A.M. Return trips leave the pier turnaround area at a quarter past every hour. The last trip back to the parking area is at 3 P.M.
Directions: From Interstate 80 in Pinole, take the Richmond Parkway/Fitzgerald Dr. exit and follow Richmond Pkwy. west 1.9 miles to the Giant Highway exit. After exiting, go 0.3 mile to a stop sign, turn right, and go another 0.2 mile to Giant Highway. Turn right and follow Giant Highway as it jogs left, crosses railroad tracks, and jogs right for a total of 0.7 mile to the park entrance, left. Go 0.1 mile to the entrance kiosk, then turn left into the parking area. The trailhead is at the northwest corner of parking area.
Point Pinole juts north like a thumb into San Pablo Bay, and the more than 10 miles of easy trails through its marshlands, grassy fields, and groves of eucalyptus offer a sanctuary from the almost continuous industrial and residential development stretching along the East Bay shoreline from San Leandro to the Carquinez Bridge. This loop trip follows The Bay View Trail to the tip of the point, then returns via the Marsh and Cook’s Point trails.
History buffs will especially enjoy this hike, because Point Pinole was the location of a large explosives manufacturing industry, which, from 1880 to 1960, turned out 2 billion pounds of dynamite. A few remnants, in the form of sunken bunkers and half-buried railroad ties, of this dangerous yet prosperous enterprise are still visible. Before starting out, you might take a moment to visit a commemorative plaque, just west of the entrance kiosk and beyond the parking-area fence, which designates Point Pinole a California Historical Landmark and tells more about the area’s unique history.
Leave the parking area and walk north along the left of two paved roads that soon join (the right one is used by a shuttle van ferrying people to the fishing pier). Turn left to cross a bridge over railroad tracks. Just past the bridge, turn left again and follow the Bay View Trail, here a dirt path, leading downhill through a grove of eucalyptus, Point Pinole’s dominant tree, to Parchester Marsh, a large expanse of pickleweed and other marsh plants at the edge of San Pablo Bay. The Bay View Trail is part of the San Francisco Bay Trail, a planned route, about half of which has been completed, which someday will encircle the Bay. As you come out into the open, past large toyon bushes, you can see Mt. Tamalpais and the Marin County shoreline across the bay, and, closer at hand, the industrial areas of Richmond.
San Francisco and San Pablo bays combined are one of the largest wintering grounds in the United States for migratory shorebirds, with an estimated one million visiting here each year. It is also the most important stop on the Pacific Flyway, a migration route between northern breeding grounds and wintering areas in Southern California, Mexico, and Central and South America. The bays are visited by a number of threatened and endangered species, such as brown pelican, least tern, and snowy plover, and its salt marshes are home to two endangered ones, clapper rail and salt marsh harvest mouse.
Upon reaching the upper edge of the marsh, you come to a T-junction with a broad dirt path; here you turn right and walk past a small sandy beach, then through another fragrant eucalyptus grove. As you pass the Cook’s Point Trail (COOKES on the trail post), right, be on the lookout for hummingbirds and, especially in winter, beautiful orange-and-black monarch butterflies. If the tide has exposed the mud flats to your left, look with binoculars or a spotting scope for feeding shorebirds. Once in a while, a northern harrier will cruise by, causing panic and putting up the birds. Farther out in the bay, you may see rafts of ducks floating on the water.
The route, parallel to the shoreline, is open here, with no shade and no protection from the wind. Just past the 0.5-mile point, a rest bench, left, invites you to sit for a moment and look out over San Pablo Bay. In the East Bay, access by foot to the shoreline is prevented in many places by levees, highways, and industrial development, so it is a pleasure to be able to walk down to the water’s edge, which you can do at several points on this loop. Partially exposed railroad ties indicate that this section of the route was probably used to transport explosives. According to the EBRPD brochure, Point Pinole was crisscrossed with “a system of two broad-gauge and extensive narrow-gauge rail lines.” Electric and gas-operated locomotives were used to transport dynamite over these rail lines between manufacturing plants, storage areas, and a shipping pier, which was east of the present-day fishing pier.
Just past a beach-access point, you turn right and follow the Bay View Trail as it climbs gently through a grove of eucalyptus, while the path you’ve been on goes straight, through a fence guarding a restricted area. At a T-junction, your route, now a dirt road, turns left and continues in the shade, soon passing two unsigned roads, less than 0.1 mile apart, on the right. After a brief descent, you reach a four-way junction. The path that went into the restricted area now rejoins your route from the left, and another road goes right. As you continue straight, you pass through an area where EBRPD has used fire to maintain the health of the eucalyptus growing here and remove forest floor debris.
At about the 1.3-mile point, you reach a fork and a cement bunker, another reminder of the area’s dynamite days. Take the left-hand fork and soon reach a bluff. Here a rest bench overlooks the bay, and an access path winds down to a gravel beach, perhaps inhabited by a snowy egret. Old wood pilings, more reminders of Point Pinole’s past, jut out of the water close to shore. A lone California buckeye and a hillside of California sagebrush, coyote brush, poison oak,
