Trailhead Map

The trailhead map is intended to contain all the trailheads around Northern California that are transit-accessible. In urban and suburban areas, this generally considered to be no more than around a 30-minute walk from stop to trailhead. In more rural areas with more sparse transit access, stops further from transit are included; in some very rare cases, mainly for the Pacific Crest Trail, trailheads as far as 2-3 hours from transit are included.

Not every county in Northern California has been added to this map yet. See below for more information on exactly which transit agencies have and have not been included. Notably, Santa Cruz County is not yet included.

Use two fingers to pan and scroll the map.

Hold ctrl and scroll to zoom.

Filter Trailheads







This map includes transit from transit agencies across Northern California.

Is this map comprehenisve?

This map is intended to be comprehensive. However, schedules change, and especially in far-flung rural areas it can be difficult to track changes over time. The map was last comprehensively updated in January 2026.

If you’ve noticed a missing trailhead, transit service that should be included but isn’t, or especially transit that no longer exists, please email [email protected] with the details.

Pedestrian access to National Forests via roadways

The lack of “trailhead access” in some rural areas does not mean there is no access for the motivated individual. Transit stops have been included here where a bus serves a specific named long-distance hiking route, even on a section that is pavement (like the Bigfoot Trail in Hayfork on Trinity Transit), but other places where a bus might stop within 4-10 miles of a National Forest have not been included (like is the case in Janesville on the Sage Stage).

If you’re interested in finding those sorts of mariginal access, enable both the Public Lands layer and the Transit Stops layer on the map, and get scrolling!

In addition to the CPAD database, useful resources for constructing transit-accessible adventures are CalTopo’s FSTopo 2016 layer for finding official trails, and the Strava Heatmap for finding routes that actually get use and have not been abandoned.

Note: the CPAD layer and Transit Stops layers have been temporarily deactivated. Browse CPAD directly on their official map »

Which transit agencies / areas are included on the map?

Muni has not been included on this map, as its services stay exclusively within San Francisco. San Francisco has fantastic urban parks, including ones with world-class urban hikes, but that information can be found across the internet as a whole.

The following agencies currently appear on the map:

Bay Area

North Coast

Sierra Nevada

Shasta Cascade

Central Valley and Foothills

The following agencies do not appear on the map, but are planned to:

Central Coast

Sierra Nevada

Central Valley and Foothills

Statewide

Microtransit and Dial-a-Ride

The following dial-a-ride and microtransit services are intended to be included on the map:


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Hiking by Transit is a labor of love for the outdoors. If you have any suggestions, more places that can be added, or questions please reach out at [email protected], or follow me on Bluesky.