Peter’s Creek Loop

Mileage: 14.0 total

Elevation Gain: 3,045 ft

NOTE: This is not a trail to be missed if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area. It goes to the third largest old-growth redwood grove in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The typical hike is 11.5 miles, but we added Old Tree, Summit Trail, Tip Toe Falls, and the Sequoia Nature Trail.

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Since this trail is located within Portola Redwoods State Park, you’ll have to fork over $10 to park, but this trail is well worth the money. Once you enter Portola Redwoods SP, head across the bridge and the parking lot will be about 100 feet straight ahead.

From the beginning of the trail, it’s a gorgeous hike with redwoods everywhere and we started the hike by making a pilgrimage to the Old Tree. It’s nothing special and nothing compared to the trees you’ll see in Peter’s Grove, but… since the tree was named and only a few tenths of a mile off our path, we felt obliged to check it out.

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From there we may our way back to the Slate Creek Trail, which immediately greeted us with a steady incline and a lot of downed trees. In fact, the night before we took this hike a big winter storm came through and knocked down plenty of trees and branches all over this entire trail. Nothing was impassable, we just had to go over, under, and around quite a few obstacles.

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We climbed up past redwoods and ferns as we made our way to Slate Creek Trail Camp, which apparently you can reserve, along with a number of other Santa Cruz backpacking camps. They’re currently closed due to Covid, but they could offer a nice getaway once the restrictions are lifted. I would 100% camp at Slate Creek Trail Camp, it’s covered with beautiful second growth redwoods.

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From here we forged on and left the redwoods as we made our way up and over a ridge (and finally felt a little sun) until we descended steeply into Peter’s Grove. Every step down meant another step we had to hike back up – yay!

When we finally made it into the grove (after avoiding 3 downed redwoods on the trail), we were awe-struck. Since Big Basin burned in 2020, we didn’t think anything like this was left in the Bay Area. It looked like we were transported back to Redwood NP, the Redwoods were ABSOLUTELY GIGANTIC. Pair that with the bubbling creek and lush ferns and it’s seriously like a mini-Redwood NP!

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We hiked around the short loop, walking through the ankle-high creek twice, and just soaked in the giant trees. Wow! We passed a couple of rangers with a chainsaw cutting downed trees that were across the path, enjoyed lunch by the creek, and then hiked up the hill out of the grove.

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Once we were over the hill and out of the grove, we were on easy street and decided to extend the hike by taking the Summit Trail to Tip Toe Falls.

We trudged through ankle-high Pescadero Creek since the seasonal footbridges were down, and although the last 0.25 or so to Tip Toe Falls was closed due to Covid, we went anyway. Since we were hiking after a big storm, no one was in the park and we had the waterfall to ourselves. Tip Toe Falls isn’t big, but it is pretty.

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After that we made our way to the Sequoia Nature Trail and found the Hollow Tree.

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We then made our way back to Park HQ again by fording Pescadero Creek.

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With all of the creek crossings, we found out that our new trail runners, Brooks Cascadia 15s (a Kraig Adams favorite), dried super quick – can’t wait to take them on a long backpacking trip with creek crossings!

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We absolutely loved this trail and highly recommend you check out Peter’s Grove and add on Tip Toe Falls. It’s amazing how beautiful Portola Redwoods State Park is — we just wish they had even more trails!