October's Stairway Walks Are Sold Out. Golden Gate Heights Already Lives on the Route.

San Francisco now gives October two walking programs. SF Stairway Month 2026 is in its third year, and the Crosstown Trail is running its first Walktober. Both have scheduled a signature walk that passes through Golden Gate Heights, and both of those walks are full. "Nature, Hills, and Stairs" climbs to Grandview Park on Sunday, October 11 and comes down the tiled steps into the Sunset. It shows as sold out with a waitlist on its Luma page. "Truly Terrific: Tiled to Tiled," on Saturday, October 24, takes in the Hidden Garden Steps, the 16th/Moraga steps, and Grandview Hill. It is also at waitlist on Eventbrite.

The hill earned that spot on the calendar through upkeep that neighbors have done for twenty years. Volunteers on the stairways and the habitat sites around them keep a monthly schedule, and none of it needs a ticket. The next date is this Saturday.

The First Tiled Stairway in the City Is on Moraga Street

The October 24 walk calls the 16th/Moraga stairway "the first tiled stairway in San Francisco." Its organizers asked Alice Xavier, the stairway's community leader, to greet walkers with the story of how it came about. That story starts in 2003, when neighbors Jessie Audette and Alice Yee Xavier began organizing. Artists Aileen Barr and Colette Crutcher then designed 163 mosaic steps on Moraga Street between 15th and 16th Avenues. The theme runs from sea at the bottom to stars at the top. The project's own site dates the opening ceremony to August 27, 2005. An SFGATE article from 2008 gives the inauguration as August 17.

The gardens on either side arrived the same way. The Xavier family donated the south-side garden, and a 2006 San Francisco Beautiful grant paid for the north side. The Golden Gate Heights Neighborhood Association is credited on the project site for its continuing sponsorship. For the 20th anniversary, Association president Sally Stephens told the San Francisco Examiner that the gathering was "a celebration of the neighbors who came together to turn an idea into a reality." Barr said she was "delighted" to see one of her first public art projects in San Francisco "become a tourist attraction."

The model has since spread across the city. Barr and Crutcher made the mosaics for all five tiled stairways on the October 24 route. Two of them are here in Golden Gate Heights, and the others are at Lincoln Park, Miraloma Elementary, and Burnside in Glen Park. This summer the East Cut finished its own tiled stairway at 388 Beale Street, with a mosaic by Wilma Wyss. The East Cut CBD dates its completion to July 30, 2026. The idea that opened on Moraga Street twenty-one years ago is still producing new stairways downtown.

October on the Hill, Date by Date

Everything happening this month on or near Golden Gate Heights' stairways is listed below. Only one item can still be joined by showing up.

The Crosstown walk costs $10, covers 5.2 miles, and takes about two and a half hours. Hosted with Arnie Thompson, it climbs from Glen Park through Glen Canyon Park and the Laguna Honda Community Trail System. It then circles behind the Forest Hill Muni Metro station and passes the Green Hairstreak butterfly corridor on the way up to Grandview Park. The walk ends at 16th and Judah, next to the N-Judah stop. Karen Rhodes, a co-founder of the Crosstown Trail, and Alexandra Kenin, who has mapped more than 900 San Francisco stairways, lead the October 24 walk. It runs 8 miles from Lincoln Park or 6 miles from Mother's Meadow. After a lunch stop at West Portal Playground, it continues through Glen Canyon to the new mosaic pillars on the Bosworth pedestrian bridge.

The Crosstown Trail has said it may add more Walktober events, so the Walktober 2026 page is worth checking before the month ends.

The Golden Gate Heights Stretch, Without a Group

Both sold-out walks pass through the same stops in Golden Gate Heights in the same order. Anyone who lives on the hill can walk that sequence on their own:

1. Hidden Garden Steps, 16th Avenue from Kirkham to Lawton. There are 148 stairs in nine sections, each with its own nature theme of flowers, plants, insects, and animals. Barr and Crutcher started work in 2012, and the steps opened to the public in December 2013, according to SFGATE.
2. 16th Avenue Tiled Steps, Moraga Street between 15th and 16th. These are the 163 sea-to-stars steps where the city's tiled stairways began.
3. Grandview Park. SF Rec & Park describes a 0.2-mile trail network to the summit, most of it on wooden stairs. On a clear day the view runs from downtown and Golden Gate Park to Point Reyes and Lake Merced. Published sources disagree on how high the summit is, so this post leaves the elevation out.
4. The connectors. A 2014 Golden Gate Heights route from 7x7 links the Quintara steps, Oriole Way, Aerial Way, Cascade Way, Selma Way, Lincoln Walk, the 15th Avenue Steps Park, Mandalay Lane, and a steep stairway down Grandview's west side. One public stairway inventory estimates that the Aerial Way run from 14th Avenue to Funston Avenue climbs about 110 feet. The inventory notes that its heights are rough estimates.

The Crosstown walk goes from here down to 16th and Judah, and the Irving Street restaurants are a couple of blocks away.

The Calendar That Keeps the Route Worth Walking

The October walks happen once a year. The work that makes them possible happens all year.

Volunteers maintain the Moraga steps and their gardens through scheduled volunteer days. The most recent one posted on the project site was an All City Volunteer Day on Saturday, July 11, 2026, from 10 a.m. to noon at the base of the steps. The site does not yet list another date. Community members care for the Hidden Garden Steps and their gardens in partnership with the San Francisco Parks Alliance and the DPW Street Parks program. Cleanup and planting days run monthly.

The habitat on the hill runs on the most regular schedule of all. Nature in the City's Green Hairstreak Corridor is a chain of eleven restored habitat sites that work as "stepping stones" between larger parks for the Coastal Green Hairstreak butterfly. The chain runs roughly along 14th Avenue, from Hawk Hill at 14th and Rivera to the triangular median at Aloha and Lomita Avenues. Golden Gate Heights Park, Rocky Outcrop, Grandview Park, street medians, stairway gardens, and private home gardens are all part of it. Nature in the City says the restoration has helped keep the butterfly from disappearing locally, and that it is raising the local population and its genetic diversity.

Site stewards at 12th Avenue and Pacheco Street lead a corridor workday on the second Saturday of every month. October's falls on the 10th, from 10 a.m. to noon. You can sign up on Meetup or simply drop in. The work includes weeding, planting, seed collecting, and pruning, with an emphasis on native plants. The organizers suggest long pants, closed-toe shoes, layers, and your own water bottle. Light rain doesn't stop the work, but heavy rain cancels it. The corridor also has an iNaturalist monitoring project that shows what has been recorded at each site.

The Crosstown walk on October 11 passes this corridor on its way to Grandview Park. Someone who spends October 10 at 12th and Pacheco will see the same habitat the next morning that the sold-out group is paying $10 to visit.

Downhill on Irving, This Year's Additions

The tiled steps come down into the Inner Sunset, where several food spots on the way home are new this year:

• Tokyo Cream, 1838 Irving Street. Mission Local reported it open by late February 2026. It serves Hokkaido-milk soft serve and a kouign-amann "nigiri."
• Maggie & Mac's, 1326 9th Avenue at Irving. It opened June 5, 2026, with an American comfort menu of burgers, potato skins, crab Caesar salad, and pizza, according to The Standard.
• Mama's Boy Pizza, 801 Irving Street at Ninth Avenue. This one is announced but not open yet. In September 2026, Mission Local reported that the owners were working through permits and hoped to start selling New York-style slices by spring 2027.

If you've worked on these steps or gardens and want to talk about what the stairways mean for daily life on the hill, Ilana Minkoff would be glad to compare notes. Let's Connect.