Golden Spike and Big Bear Trails

Today, my daughter and I went for a short hike through Anthony Chabot and Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park. I think that we probably only hiked for one mile, in an in-and-out hike, but I saw a way to extend this nice hike for a longer loop. The Golden Spike Trail in Reinhardt Regional Park was especially pleasant, and it was fun for me to visit this part of the park for the first time.

We parked at the MacDonald Gate because all of the parking lots past the Redwood Gate were already filled. We hiked north along Redwood Road on one leg of the Big Bear Loop, then took the crosswalk across the road to get to the Golden Spike Trail. We hiked south towards the main area of Reinhardt Redwood.

The trail climbed fairly gently, but I was carrying her in a backpack carrier. The extra weight did make it a more challenging hike than it would have been otherwise. We had a bit of a late start and only started hiking about 11:00 am, and we hiked until we got hungry. Then we found a nice little spot to make a picnic, and had lunch. Afterwards we hiked back to the car, and she did all of the downhill hiking herself. It was a lovely outing for a young hiker. The route we took is indicated in pink on the map above.

Had I not had her with me, then I would have liked to have tried the longer route (the extension of the hike in purple), which is still only about 2.75 miles but with more elevation gain. Really, there are a lot of ways to make loops through the trail system of Reinhardt Redwood, so the route could be scaled up as far as you wanted to. This is a great option for days when Reinhardt's parking lots are filled: the MacDonald Gate lot doesn't fill up nearly as quickly. Personally, I really liked the mixed forest. We still got to see redwoods, but we also saw lots of other kinds of trees as well. It made for a really interesting fall hike.