Bay Trail Trekker Aims to Circle the Bay in 30 Days
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — A Bay Area outdoorsman is undertaking an unusual challenge: using the Bay Trail to circle the entire San Francisco Bay by foot during the month of June. His quest will showcase newly completed segments of the 330-mile network of pathways ringing the Bay and highlight handy new tools for navigating the Bay Trail, namely a boxed set of map cards and an online map tool. His journey also will underscore the ease of accessing the Bay Trail via the region’s bus, rail and ferry network.
The trekker is Kurt Schwabe of San Francisco, and he will launch his trek on Friday, May 31, with a meet-and-greet at 10 a.m. with the press at the S.F. Ferry Building (at the Bay Crossings store), followed by a warm-up hike along the Embarcadero, which is part of the Bay Trail. On hand to send him off will be Julie Pierce, mayor of Clayton and vice president of the Association of Bay Area Governments, which manages the Bay Trail Project, and Anne Halsted, vice chair of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) board and a commissioner on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC).
Schwabe starts his journey in earnest the next day, on Saturday, June 1, and is inviting the media, local officials and the public to join him at any point along his 30-day adventure, and to experience the joys of the Bay Trail first hand.
Early each morning for the next 30 days, Schwabe will set out from his condo in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood, and try out a new segment of the Bay Trail. At night, he will return home to download his photos and to blog about his experience, at walkingthebaytrail.com.
Public transit figures big in Schwabe’s itinerary: He plans to ride buses, trains and ferries to and from the trailheads, each morning picking up from where he left off the day before, using a Clipper® card provided by MTC to pay his fares.
Not only is public transit the most sustainable way to reach the region’s great outdoors, but also it will allow him to get home at night without having to backtrack to a car parked at his starting point. “The Bay Trail is connected to public transportation at just about any point along our shoreline,” Schwabe writes in one of his pre-trek blog posts.
A lifelong avid outdoorsman who spends a good part of each week running and walking, Schwabe, 45, has had a varied career in real estate, advertising, finance and fundraising. When his job with an online marketing company dried up this past February, he started to look for a new direction, and found inspiration in the ambitious Bay Trail network, which is available to both hikers and cyclists.
The timing for Schwabe’s adventure couldn’t be better: It coincides with beginning of summer and the publication by ABAG of a handsome new boxed set of two dozen Bay Trail map cards, each with a suggested trip and points of interest along the way. The maps will be a mainstay of Schwabe’s backpack, along with the latest edition of the San Francisco Bay Shoreline Guide, which showcases the trail’s ecological riches and recreational offerings. Funding for both resources was provided through grants from the State Coastal Conservancy.
ABAG Bay Trail Project Director Laura Thompson also has enlisted Schwabe to try out and promote a new interactive online map tool that dishes up the entire Bay Trail network on desktops, laptops and mobile devices: baytrail.org/maps-online.html.
In the making since 1987, the Bay Trail is now two-thirds complete. Schwabe’s trek will shine a spotlight on gaps in the trail where planners are still trying to find a pathway along the edge of the Bay. He’ll also have to contend with a gap in public transit service along the northern edge of San Pablo Bay, and anticipates having to drive to that trailhead.
MTC is co-sponsoring the effort by providing Schwabe with loaded Clipper cards to showcase the regional transit fare-payment program, which MTC manages and now is used over 700,000 times a day across eight major public transit systems.
“MTC has been a strong supporter of the Bay Trail and has contributed $4.4 million in planning moneys over the past 25 years to make the trail a reality,” said MTC Commissioner Anne Halsted. “With this walk, he is becoming an ambassador for the Bay Trail as well as for the Clipper transit fare card, showing that these two innovations go hand in hand and that the Bay Trail is an important corridor for green commuting.”
A veteran of a number of marathons and triathlons, not to mention climbing Mt. Shasta and trekking the Himalayas, Schwabe is used to endurance sports, and expects to walk anywhere from five to 13 miles a day during his June quest, cumulatively covering nearly 250 miles by the time the month is over.
Observers can monitor Schwabe’s movements in real time via a GPS tracker that will link to his blog, located at walkingthebaytrail.com. Residents or members of the media who want to join him for a leg of his month-long journey can arrange to meet by e-mailing him at kurt_schwabe@yahoo.com.
The Bay Trail map card set includes a fold-out map of the entire system as well as a guide to birding on the trail and is available for purchase at www.baytrail.org for $14.95, as well as at the Bay Crossings store at the San Francisco Ferry Building and in area bookstores.
MTC is the transportation planning, financing and coordinating agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. ABAG is the regional planning agency for the nine counties and 101 cities and towns of the Bay Area, and is recognized as the first Council of Governments in California. The Coastal Conservancy is a primary funder of the Bay Trail and has allocated over $20 million over the past 15 years for planning, design and construction of Bay Trail segments throughout the region.
Contacts:
Brenda Kahn, MTC: (415) 778-6773,
(510) 207-4294 cell
Kathleen Cha, ABAG: (510) 464-7922
Terry Lee, MTC: (510) 817-5952