VOL · ISUMMER 2026
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← FROM THE FIELD · VOL. I, N° 94PLATE B · ELEVATION · SUN ALT 57°AFTERNOON · PRESIDIO · LETTERMAN
ELEVATION · FERRY BLDG · 7 AMMARINE LAYER · 53°F · VIS 1/2 MILE
SAN FRANCISCO · FIELD NOTES · 6 MIN

The Presidio, on the fog side.

Most of the Presidio is forest. The Letterman side is where the fog conditioner runs all afternoon. Three picks for SF’s most reliably cool walking corridor.

By

The Presidio’s northwest corner — Letterman through Crissy Field — sits in the fog corridor that pours through the Golden Gate every afternoon. Even when the city is warm, this stretch is 10 to 15 degrees cooler. Combined with the cypress + eucalyptus forest above, it’s arguably SF’s coolest walking neighborhood May through October.

These picks all use the forest descent paths and the bay-edge promenade. Crissy Field’s eastern half is the only sunny stretch; we route the western half via the Warming Hut’s eucalyptus row instead.

The picks · 3.Graded JUN 12, 2026
  1. 01
    Letterman Digital Arts to Crissy Field

    North through the cypress allée. The fog corridor takes over at the bay.

    Shade
    86%
    Walk
    12 min
    Best at
    2 pm
  2. 02
    Lover’s Lane to Inspiration Point

    Through the forest — eucalyptus + Monterey cypress — up the ridge. Cool the whole way.

    Shade
    90%
    Walk
    16 min
    Best at
    1 pm
  3. 03
    Warming Hut to Marina Green

    East along the bayfront. The Warming Hut’s eucalyptus row covers the first 500m; the breeze does the rest.

    Shade
    72%
    Walk
    20 min
    Best at
    3:30 pm

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About the author
Amar Braithwaite is the founder of Stay Cool. He builds shade-aware navigation tools and writes the Field Notes corpus on urban shade infrastructure. Read the why →

Walk in the shade.

Stay Cool computes a shadow-aware route for any city we map.

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