Old Stage Road, Uncle Man Road, and Youth Camp Trail is a 2.8 mile lightly trafficked loop trail located near La Honda, California that offers the chance to see wildlife and is rated as moderate. The trail is primarily used for hiking, walking, and running and is accessible year-round.
Nice forest walk in light rain. The roads are pretty close throughout, but that doesn’t detract from the visual beauty.
The trail was great! It’s definitely on the side of a mountain, with a lot of steep inclines & declines. So if you have sensitive knees or injuries, I highly recommend bringing some trekking poles to help stabilize yourself. Trailhead is on the right of the ranger building of the Sam Macdonald parking lot. Fee is $6, cash only. There’s a box to put in your payment & a ranger checks that you have a slip on your dashboard. The trail is well-kept: Forest Trail & Youth Camp are narrow & very wild vs Uncle Man Road is what seems to be an unused road, so very wide & slightly paved but with leaves & branches. Stay on trail, lots of poison oak around. Watch out for banana slugs! Forest Trail was by far the most beautiful trail I’ve been on. Surrounded by redwoods, ferns, and the ground doesn’t feel paved or heavily trodden; it feels like an old forgotten path to make you feel like no one has been there in a while. I went at 1pm on a Saturday in Feb & I came across 3 people. I went backwards, so started with the Youth Camp Trail (made a right in the beginning) & I liked it better because it was a lot of uphill but I think it would’ve been harder to do the downhill, it was long & pretty steep.
Didn't see any fauna but was a nice walk through the tall trees and I didn't run into anyone else which was great.
Counted 33 banana slugs along our route.. and so so many more mushrooms. Excellent fun!
really great spot! Not crowded at all and a good workout. we also counted 22 banana slugs! We parked at a sort of random big turn out and walked down the highway a few hundred feet to horse cross entrance then crossed the street to the trail head. We went clockwise and the first half of the trail was pretty steep downhills without many switchbacks. It was nice and quite and we didn't see anybody! The latter half was closer to the road and a little louder with a very steep uphill with switchbacks. The trail was fully shaded.
Beautiful trees and not crowded. Only saw 2 other groups on the trail on Sunday evening. Nice elevation change - got in a good workout.
Make sure to follow the arrows on the all trails app trail route. Unless you want to do way more uphill like I learned the hard way.
awesome hike! lots of branches in the trail but winds were 20mph when we went
A wonderful trail with beautiful views of the Forrest. Half of the trail is easy, relatively flat. The other half has moderate inclines and is a bit more challenging. Throughout the trail there are easy to follow markers.