Walking The Los Gatos Creek Trail This Summer: What's Actually Different This Year
July 23, 2026
July 23, 2026
If you have lived in Los Gatos for even a few summers, the trail is muscle memory. You know where the shade breaks near Forbes Mill, which pond at Los Gatos Creek County Park draws the fishing crowd, and roughly how long the walk to Vasona takes when the sun is still up at eight. The route hasn't moved. But if you've been away from it for a season, a few things have quietly changed along the corridor, and they add up to a different summer than the one you remember.
This is a resident's read on where the trail has shifted, where it hasn't, and how a Saturday morning loop looks a little different in July 2026 than it did in July 2024.
For years, the trail's most awkward moment happened right where downtown ended. Walkers coming north from Forbes Mill had to work around Highway 9 with a mix of ramps and street segments that were serviceable but never elegant. That changed with a new pedestrian and bicycle bridge over Los Gatos Creek on the south side of Highway 9, part of the Town's Los Gatos Creek Trail to Highway 9 Trailhead Connector project. The Town's project page notes the prefabricated bridge was craned into place overnight on November 1, 2024, with the eastbound Highway 9 closure between Highway 17 and University Avenue lifted the next morning.
What that means on a practical level: the switchback ramp on the north side of Highway 9 and the new south-side bridge from University Avenue give you a continuous, dedicated path from the north side of downtown into the creek corridor. If you used to skip this segment because the crossing felt like a chore, it isn't anymore. If you route your morning walks from a coffee stop on N. Santa Cruz Avenue, you now have a cleaner way in than the one you probably built the habit around.
The full trail is 9.7 miles from Lexington Reservoir to Meridian Avenue, and it is jointly operated by the Town of Los Gatos, Santa Clara County Parks, the City of Campbell, and the City of San Jose. For most Los Gatos residents, though, the walk lives inside four practical access points:
If a section of trail is looking closed on a given morning, the Santa Clara County Parks alerts page currently notes a partial closure with a short detour around a roughly 100-foot section. Before a long walk, the trail hotline at 408-355-2200, extension 38, is the fastest way to check.
Two openings on opposite ends of the corridor have quietly changed what a trail-plus-errand morning looks like.
On April 15, 2026, Whole Foods Market opened a relocated Los Gatos store at 15650 Los Gatos Boulevard. Per the company's announcement, the new location is 43,130 square feet, nearly double the size of the previous store that had served Los Gatos for more than 30 years, with a coffee and juice bar, expanded seating, and a larger dedicated parking lot. For anyone who used to end a walk with the old store's small lot and cramped aisles, the geometry of that habit is different now. The new footprint sits farther east on Los Gatos Boulevard, which is a driving detail more than a walking one, but it reshapes the errand half of the ritual.
On the other end of the corridor, Palmetto Superfoods opened a compact storefront in Old Town Los Gatos at 50 University Avenue, Suite D210, sometime this spring. Local reporting placed a five-year lease under CEO Charles Lee, with a build-your-own açaí bowl and smoothie menu positioned for pickup and delivery from the open-air center. What matters here isn't the concept, it's the location: Old Town sits directly adjacent to a Lundy Lane trail entry, which makes a north-bound trail walk from Forbes Mill to Old Town a legitimate short loop with a cold bowl at the end.
The trail hasn't gotten longer this year. The reasons to walk it have.
Most of the corridor is exactly as you remember it. The paved section from Forbes Mill north is still shaded through the riparian stretch, the mile markers still count up from the zero at Alma Bridge Road at Lexington, and the southern portion between the dam and Forbes Mill is still unpaved dirt and gravel for about a mile and a half. The Jones and Flume trails on the east side of the creek still offer the pedestrian-only alternative down to the water, and Jones Road remains the cycling option to reach downtown from Novitiate Park.
Los Gatos Creek County Park is still the middle of a long walk rather than a destination in itself. The dog park is still the one with shade, seating, water, and turf underfoot instead of dust. The casting ponds are open daily 8 a.m. until sunset for fly and plug practice.
A note about mornings this time of year: the county park opens at 8 a.m. and closes at sunset, and the paved trail through the Campbell section runs roughly three miles including the two-mile par course loop. If your goal is to be off the exposed midsection before it heats up, a 7 a.m. Forbes Mill start and a coffee finish in Old Town is a cleaner arc than a mid-morning attempt.
None of this is a headline. A new pedestrian bridge, a relocated grocery store, a small bowl shop tucked into a retail suite — individually, they read like the kind of thing you scroll past in a town newsletter. Taken together, they have redrawn the practical geography of the trail for the people who actually walk it. The entry from downtown is smoother. The northbound loop has a new short anchor at Old Town. The errand run at the trail's western edge lives at a different address than it did a year ago. The trail hotline and the county alerts page have replaced the guesswork about the one section still cordoned off.
For residents who moved into Los Gatos in the last few years, that's mostly good news: the ritual you were building is a little easier to build now. For residents who have been here for decades, it's a reminder that the corridor is still being maintained, invested in, and adjusted. A trail run by four different jurisdictions doesn't stay stitched together by accident.
The best walk of the summer is still probably the one you already know. It's just worth taking it once with fresh eyes to see what quietly shifted while you weren't looking.
If you're thinking about a move within Los Gatos, considering a home closer to the trail, or wondering how a particular block sits relative to the corridor's access points, Renovato & Co. is happy to walk it with you, literally or otherwise. Let's Begin.
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