Hiking with Babies near Sacramento: Cascade Canal Trail

Cascade Canal Trail Overview

The Cascade Canal Trail is a shady, flat out-and-back trail about 75 minutes north-east of Sacramento (near Grass Valley). It’s 4.4 miles one way (8.8 miles round-trip) with almost no elevation change. The trail follows along a small canal and offers some beautiful views of the tree-covered valley below. The combination of ample shade and slightly higher elevation (3,200 feet) makes this a cool (literally and figuratively) hike to do during the hot summer months.

Directions

We decided to start at the southern end of the trail due to the abundance of parking. We went on a Sunday afternoon in July, and the parking lot wasn’t even half full. (In contrast, we’ve been told that the northern trailhead has very limited parking). The southern trailhead is on Gracie Rd. about 500 feet from the intersection of Banner Lava Cap Rd. and Gracie Rd. We plugged the intersection of Banner Lava Cap Rd. and Gracie Rd. into our GPS and found it without any problems. (We had cell and data service the whole drive, so it’s easy to use GPS to navigate.) If your GPS doesn’t allow you to search for intersections, you could search instead for the Nevada County Fire Station at 12237 Banner Lava Cap Rd, Nevada City, CA 95959, which is just east of the intersection.

It’s quite straight-forward until you get to Grass Valley, at which point there are a few twisty turns through town before you get to the trail, so we found GPS to be helpful.

Trail Map

Map courtesy of the Bear Yuba Land Trust.

The Cascade Canal Trail is well-marked and easy to follow. Since it’s almost completely flat, a topo-map is not required.

Our Experience

Our kid loved this hike–she was fascinated by the water in the canal, and always enjoys looking at trees, so she was entertained the whole time. We also saw some turkey vultures, a couple butterflies, and a low-flying airplane, so she was quite thrilled.

From an adult perspective, the well-maintained trail, lack of elevation gain, and almost constant shade made for an easy and enjoyable day. Be aware that the trail does go past the backyards of some houses in a few places, but I found that it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the trail. I still felt like I was able to “get away from it all” on this nice walk through the woods. We will definitely be going back.