San Francisco Crosstown and Double Cross Walks

I had a little epiphany recently where I thought to myself, "People from all over the world pay lots of money and fly into San Francisco. We live right here. Maybe we can do a few excursions just like a tourist would and see whether it's any good!" With that, I found the San Francisco Doublecross and the San Francisco Crosstown walks and decided to tackle them over a couple of Saturdays.

Both these walks start at free parking lots in San Francisco (Fort Funston and Candlestick Park), which is important because you're going to be gone all day. Despite San Francisco's reputation, on neither days did our cars get broken into. On the return you're going to have to Uber/Waymo or take public transit back. Since San Francisco public transit sucks, you're probably going to have to Uber or Waymo. Of the two ride hailing services, Waymo actually will refuse to deliver you to either Candlestick Park or Fort Funston, but on the Doublecross it can deliver you to Lake Merced and by pushing the "Pullover" button at a judicious time you can keep the walk back to the parking lot to less than a mile. Of course, the price of these ride hailing services is such that this is far more expensive than any of the other hikes in the Bay Area where you can loop back to the car. On the other hand, you're basically pretending to be a tourist who's paid at least a few hundred dollars for the flight to San Francisco, so you can still pretend to come out ahead.

The nice thing about doing a walk like this in the city is that you pretty much only need to carry a small water bottle and your wallet (or phone with GPay/Apple Pay) and walk. There's plenty of places to buy food, refill your water bottle, and in the case of the Crosstown, there are even many designated restrooms along the way. There are also plenty of distractions, so even if you're a fast walker (we're not), do not expect either of these walks to take less than a day.

Of the two walks, the Double Cross is actually a much better route. It starts at Fort Funston and ends at Pier 29, so you have a tail wind most of the way, which makes it much more comfortable. It also shows off more of the iconic San Francisco neighborhoods, taking you through Stern Grove, Twin Peaks, China Town, Little Italy, and Embarcadero, Coit Tower, and of course the San Francisco Exploratorium. The Crosstown by contrast does take you through the Presidio and Golden Gate Park, but neither feel as iconic. The DoubleCross also shows you the homeless situation in San Francisco while the Crosstown strictly avoids homelessness.

Both routes have about 2000 feet of climbing, and would never take a route around a hill when it can take you directly over it for maximum chance of views. I chose to do both walks in the summer so we would have maximum daylight despite relatively late starts, and also because summer is when hiking in the south bay would be extremely hot while San Francisco is nice and cool, providing a nice break from the summer heat.

Both Candlestick park and Fort Funston close at sunset, so there's a deadline for the hike --- you must return to your car by the time the parks close, so you must finish by around 7:00pm in the summer. Candlestick park is nowhere close to good dining, but Fort Funston is conveniently located near Soul Rice, one of the few good Chinese restaurants you can find easily that never has a wait and serves food quickly. In both cases we finished the walk within about 7 hours of starting (including a half hour or so for lunch), and our kids are 14 and 10, so this should be well within the capability of most non-sedentary adults.

Both walks showed me aspects of San Francisco that I'd never made a point of visiting before, and also provide iconic visits to the city's many varied parks. The best time to do this hike if you're capable of getting up early is in the Spring or Fall, when the views wouldn't be obscured by the heavy fog. Nevertheless, I enjoyed both walks as a respite from the heat as well as an idea of what causes people to travel to visit San Francisco.