If you’ve never been to San Francisco, you probably don’t know about how steep our infamous hills are. Or maybe you have heard about it but have trouble imagining it. Either way, I thought it would be fun to take some pictures along my route and share them. I am hoping you’ll enjoy them even if you know the route because you’ve walked on parts of it or driven it.

The steepest part of my walk is from Kearny St to Grace Cathedral at Taylor. The pictures that I took along California Street don’t do the steepness justice, so I’ll probably try again… Here you can see the beginning of the climb:

Up a slight hill from Kearny St is Grant St, which is one of the busy streets in China town. You can sort of tell from the angle of the cars how steep the next hill is…

And, of course, everybody is struggling up this hill… (Except for the runner who passed us shortly after I took this picture).

I realized that turning around gives a great view of the incline! No, this is not where you drop off the Earth; it’s going West on California St.

Two more blocks (Powell St and Mason St) and California St levels off again (total elevation increase from Kearny St to Mason St on California: 213 feet / 65 m). I turn right to go to Sacramento St, which goes up with a comparatively mild hill behind Grace Cathedral (it’s only about 38 feet / 11 m up from Taylor St to Leavenworth on Sacramento). Shortly after this hill, going down on Sacramento St toward Van Ness, I got a good view of the next climb, though!

Going up Sacramento past Van Ness, another multi-block hill needs to be conquered, not quite as bad as the first but certainly steeper than that little one by Grace Cathedral (total climb from Van Ness to Laguna St on Sacramento: 117 feet / 36 m). After that, it feels like I am walking practically downhill, though there are still little hills (and the total climb is 199 feet / 61 m). But they aren’t as big as these three, with elevation changes much more gradual.

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