Pulgas Ridge San Carlos Trail Access: A New Gate for Hillside Walks

At the end of Los Vientos Way, past the last driveway in the Highlands, there used to be a chain-link fence with a padlock and not much else. Now there's a proper pipe gate, a pedestrian stile, and a bike rack, and on the other side of it is a trail that drops straight into Pulgas Ridge Open Space Preserve. No new parking was added. The point was never to draw a crowd. The point was to give the people who already live on that street, and the streets near it, a door to their own hillside that didn't require getting in a car.

This is a small thing on paper. In practice, it's the more interesting half of a story that changes where a lot of San Carlos residents should be walking this fall. The other half is happening at Edgewood Park, where the trail with the best view in the preserve is currently roped off, and will stay that way through the end of this month at least.

The Gate at the End of the Cul-de-Sac

The Los Vientos access point went to a vote at a Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District board meeting on February 14, 2024, and passed unanimously. It wasn't the first time the idea had come up. A similar proposal surfaced back in 2011 and stalled over the same objection that resurfaced in 2024: a trailhead that empties directly onto a residential cul-de-sac changes what that cul-de-sac feels like.

Charlene Garabedian, who lives nearby, told the board she understood both sides but wanted her neighbors heard, saying she wanted "to advocate for my neighbors" given the barking dogs, traffic, and noise she expected the opening to bring. Other residents pushed back the other direction. Beth Harrison told the board "this whole idea of open space is why we live in this area," and argued the city should be connecting its parks, not fencing them off from each other.

What actually got built split the difference. The district's own project filing describes the change precisely: replace the old chain-link fence and gate at the terminus of Los Vientos Way, about 135 feet southwest of Best Court, with a standard district pipe vehicle gate, a pedestrian entrance stile, bike racks, and signage. No new on-street or off-street parking. The existing trail on the other side connects directly to the Dusky-Footed Woodrat Trail inside the preserve.

If you live in the Highlands, or anywhere within an easy walk of that cul-de-sac, this is the version of Pulgas Ridge access that didn't exist before 2024: no drive to the Edmonds Road lot, no competing for one of the roughly two dozen parking spaces there, just a walk down your own street and through a gate.

The View That's Behind a Fence Right Now

Meanwhile, across town, the trail most people picture when they picture Edgewood Park is currently closed. San Mateo County's park advisory page confirms the Ridgeview Trail is shut between trail markers 13 and 15 through September 2026 while PG&E upgrades a natural gas pipeline running underneath it.

The timing matters because Ridgeview isn't a side trail. It's the one that traces the sunny south side of the park's 875-foot ridge and climbs to Inspiration Heights, where the county's own trail description promises views stretching from Mount Diablo and Mount Hamilton in the east to the Santa Cruz Mountains skyline in the west. It's the payoff trail. If your usual Edgewood loop includes that stretch, and for a lot of regulars it does, that loop is currently broken and has to be rerouted through the Serpentine Trail instead.

Two Preserves, Two Very Different Rules

The closure makes this a good month to actually compare the two hillside preserves that sit closest to San Carlos, because the two of them run on almost opposite rules.

The dog rule is the one that actually decides a lot of people's routine. Edgewood bans dogs on every trail in the park, full stop. Pulgas Ridge does the opposite: dogs are welcome on a six-foot leash across the preserve's six miles of trail, and there's a dedicated off-leash area in the middle of it, reachable from the Cordilleras Trail, the Polly Geraci and Hassler Trails, or the Blue Oak Trail, according to the district's own preserve page. For a dog owner choosing between the two parks this fall, that's not a close call.

So Which One Do You Actually Walk This Month

If your daily loop starts anywhere near the Highlands, the Los Vientos gate probably just became your default. It's a walk-out-the-door option into a preserve that, until recently, meant driving to the Edmonds Road entrance off Crestview Drive.

If you're coming from downtown or the flats near Laurel Street, Edgewood is still the closer drive, and most of the park remains open. You'll just want to plan around the Ridgeview closure rather than discover it mid-hike, and if you're bringing a dog, Edgewood was never the plan anyway.

Either way, this is a good fall to default to Pulgas Ridge. It's fully open, it now has a second entrance that didn't exist two years ago, and it's the one park of the two where a dog can actually come along.

The Pattern Behind the Gate

The Los Vientos opening isn't an isolated project. Following direction from the city council's 2023 Strategic Planning Retreat, San Carlos has been working on the Devonshire Canyon Trail, a roughly 3,950-foot connector accessed from Vista Park that would give hikers a new out-and-back route up the hillside. Design work on that trail was completed in August 2024, according to the city's own capital projects page, with a design team pairing a landscape consultant with a trail-building contractor experienced in exactly this kind of switchback work.

Taken together, the Los Vientos gate and the Devonshire Canyon project point to the same thing: San Carlos has been quietly adding small points of hillside access rather than expanding one big trailhead. That's a different kind of growth than a new restaurant or a new development. It shows up one gate, one cul-de-sac, one out-and-back connector at a time, and the only way to notice it is to already be walking these hills often enough to see what changed.

That's the whole point of paying attention to a neighborhood you already live in. The map didn't get redrawn. A gate opened, another trail closed for a season, and the walk you've been doing for years is, for right now, not quite the same walk it was last spring.

If you're weighing what any of this means for a home near the Highlands, near Edgewood, or anywhere else in San Carlos, Laura Dunne of D & L Properties has spent years working this stretch of the Peninsula and is glad to talk through it. Let's Connect.