Hike SF

While Ellie poured over volumes in the UCSF Library one Sunday in mid-November, I hiked up and around Twin Peaks. A narrow couple lanes encircle both bumps, forming a figure eight. But unlike the tourist magnet to the North, the eight has no sidewalk–only a retaining wall separating the street from a muddy trail.

The fog easily keeps the mud slick and treacherous. After a few near slips, I moved to the road. And after a few near automobile hits, I moved on top of the wall.

Its back is comfy eight inches wide, but feels like a tight rope. On one side, cars whiz by; on the other, a nasty fall down the rocky hill awaits. Descending on the southern side, both wall and trail disappear, and cars and pedestrians flirt perilously.

On Sunday afternoon I met several sleepy-eyed friends at the Seward Street Slides, which Matt had discovered days prior. Many of them had arisen at dawn to run a 10k, but all suddenly had boundless energy upon sighting the slides.

Neighborhood folk leave cardboard boxes in the park, because they make for a much faster decent down the roughly 8m tall slides. To accelerate yer plunge further, Matt had the pro tip: sand under the cardboard will act like ball bearings. So for about half an hour, we’d run up the hill with a cardboard slab and fist full of sand, and slide right back down. The true speed demons (e.g. Rob) could get enough speed to shoot right off the end and into the sand pit.

The slides are about 50m up Seward from its intersection with Douglass, on the left side, nestled in a park that contains almost nothing but the slides. It’ll be 34 years old on the 19th.