Fremont Older is a 739-acre regional park located in the Santa Clara County. I’ve hiked a small segment of this with my family (when my kids were little) and all I could recall was how exposed it was. As part of my ongoing series on Bay Area Trail Running, I mapped out a ~10 mile loop around this Open Space Preserve also connecting up to Stevens Creek County Park. Until recently, I didn’t know that Fremont Older was a newspaperman and editor in San Francisco who lived here with his wife. Apparently he bought the then 200-acre house for $10,000 in 1912. Imagine that!

Fremont Older Open Space Preserve

You drive up Prospect Road (off of South De Anza Boulevard) until it dead ends into the trail head. Parking is limited and it does fill up pretty quickly during the weekend. You can find the trail maps at the openspace.org.

I was definitely pleasantly surprised by the amount of shade on this run. The Tony Look Trail, especially, is a beautiful shaded single track running along the Stevens Creek reservoir. Madrones and large Oak trees provide ample amounts of shade even during mid-day. As for water, I didn’t find any at the main parking lot. However, about 5 miles in, there’s a restroom and a water fountain at the start of the Tony Look Trail. Very convenient and on an early morning run, you could run this loop without carrying any water.

Here’s the route I took:

• Cora Older Trail
• Seven Springs Loop Trail
• Hayfield Trail
• Coyote Ridge Trail
• Tony Look Trail
• Lookout Trail
• Vista Loop Trail
• Bay View Trail
• Toyon Trail
• Hayfield Trail
• Creekside Trail

Once you leave Vista Loop trail, there are many ways to end the loop. I chose the Bay View trail to head back up on Toyon and Hayfield followed by the slightly longer Creekside trail to get back to the parking lot. The total elevation gain on this route is a 2,061 ft and the rolling hills makes this fun. This loop is a mix of fire trails, single tracks and a few 100 yards of asphalt on the last part of the run. Just watch out for the Poison Oak and have someone check you for Ticks when you finish up.

Have you run through the Fremont Older? What’s your favorite route through?

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