Smell What I'm Stepping In: Montana de Oro State Park Run

August 8th 2012
My wife, son and I got a chance to get out of town for a couple days and headed out to San Luis Obispo to see my sister, hang out by the beach, oh and run of course. A few weeks back one of our local running stores Soul 2 Sole hosted a big group run out of town at the Montana de Oro state park, I didn't get the chance to go along but since I was going to be in the area I knew this would be a good place for a run. Otherwise I probably would have just hit up the Bob Jones trail, which is nice but its a short bike path that cuts through a golf course and ends at Avila beach, still a beautiful place to run but I wanted to check out some real trails.
I drove out to the park, which was only about 15 mins from our hotel in San Luis and according to the small map I was looking at the night before on my phone I was going to park just inside the entrance of the park. I parked on some dirt off the side of the road and looked for the trailhead, hoping that my car wasn't parked illegally.

Based off the small map I had (see above) I started on the trail near the northern part of the park where the cable trail and bloody nose meet. Well somehow this map was not completely accurate or I just didn't read it right. From the way I saw it where the trail started there should have been a fork one for cable trail and one for bloody nose, yet I was heading down cable which was equivalent to running on the beach since it was soft sand, and saw no turnout. I could see another trail at the bottom of a steep embankment but with no clear way to get down there. So after about 15 min I just decided to bushwack it down to the lower trail which turned out to be bloody nose trail. Finally on the correct trail I was able to enjoy the journey which wound down around and back up a small hill to a camping area, from there the trail forked. One way headed back towards the beach and the other took you up a little higher to Hazard Peak, which is the way I went. The climb up to Hazard peak was mellow and once at the top there are some benches so you can hang out and enjoy the awesome views. I wanted to continue running on some of the other trails but was limited on time so I just headed back to my car using the same route.
I definitely look forward to running the trails out there again, with the perfect weather and awesome view who wouldn't want to run out there.