Summit Loop Trail, San Bruno Mountain — Attraction in Daly City

Major poison oak on about 50% of the trail. May 5, 2025, they cut back a good stretch, but a lot of menacing tendrils are still creeping in on the trail, ugh. Great views from the clearings. It was a welcome geographical challenge for us East Bay natives to name all we could see. Bay and ocean views, Daly city, downtown SF, 101, Bay Bridge, Mt. Tam, Mt. D, Ocean Beach, Lake Merced, incredibly beautiful. Our day was clear and hot. Some shade on the trail, but mostly sunny. Eucalyptus smells divine. Easy climb. Samsung phone showed a total of 6.11 miles from picnic ground parking (trail head parking was supposedly closed, but we saw a car parked there on our way back). But the extra walk from picnic parking was only about .5 mile round trip at most. So the "3 mile loop" was definitely more like 5.7 miles. The machine to pay for parking was broken, so we were not sure that they were enforcing parking fines. As seniors, we took a cash payment envelope and wrote "senior" on the stub and put it on the dash. Many cars did have a stub on the dash, so I'm really not sure. Hope...

The trail is about 3 miles and has about 1000ft of elevation gain. The sign says it's a hard trail. There's is a lot of uphill which makes it hard. I would say it's more intermediate if you have time, because it will take some time to walk all the way to the top. The trails are mostly single track and a mix of dirt and loose...

We went after a light rain and counted no fewer than 207 banana slugs on the summit loop trail! Very doable trail, about 2 hours if you don’t stop for breaks. Not too steep, easy...