Madrone Canyon Trail

Thick, peeling madrone branches next to Madrone Canyon Trail at Lower Rock City

The one-mile-long Madrone Canyon Trail in Mount Diablo State Park lives up to its name. Alongside this trail you will find old-grown madrones on the steep canyon sides reaching for the sky . Unless you start climbing the granite walls of the Boy Scout Rocks at Lower Rock City, you will find yourself in the shade of evergreens all the way through Madrone Canyon. At one point a bridge crosses the creek at the canyon bottom.

Bending trunk of a Pacific Madrone

Madrone Canyon Trail

Madrone Canyon Trail connects the Rock City Area with Devil's Slide Trail. In Lower Rock City, you will find a picnic table next to an old madrone tree with one heavy branch supported by a post (top and bottom picture). As you continue downhill through Madrone Canyon, you will immerse in a jungle of peeling bark and waxy green leaves.

In the canyon, the Pacific Madrone (Arbutus menziesii) trees rarely grow a straight trunk. The tall trees display bending, often slightly winding trunks and branches. Many of them survived on slopes with slowly sliding ground, depending on rain fall and water flow. Over time, the trees that slowly moved along with the soil—or shifted downhill during an avalanche—and so got out of balance, may have adjusted their growth from tilted to upright in trying to maximize their capture of sun light. If this is the case, each tree has conserved its own canyon history in the trunk curvature. Whatever the reason, standing or walking in a madrone forest with curved and sometimes entangling trees, which feature peeling red-brown bark and expose the inner, pinkish green wood with a satin sheen, is a unique, almost haunting experience.

Climber exploring a Boy Scout Rock on the west side of Madrone Canyon Trail

 

Getting to the Madrone Canyon Trail

Drive South Gate Road uphill to Rock City. Find parking at Lower Rock City in the Rock City Live Oak area. Walk downhill to the Trail Through Time or to the picnic table with the post-supported madrone branch, from where a single-track trail continues downhill into and through Madrone Canyon.

Little Rock City picnic table with supported madrone branch

Keywords: hiking; madrone grove; Arbutus; Ericaceae.

More to explore

The Outbound Collective: Hike in Mount Diablo's Madrone Canyon [theoutbound.com/san-francisco/hiking/hike-in-mount-diablo-s-madrone-canyon].