San Marcos Closes Two Parks for One Saturday, and Most Locals Only Notice One

If you live anywhere near Double Peak, you already have a version of the same routine. You drive up Double Peak Drive, park near the amphitheater, walk past the telescope, and look out at whatever the marine layer is doing to the ocean that morning. It is the kind of thing you do without thinking, the way you'd check the mail or take the dog around the block.

On Saturday, September 26, that routine does not work. Double Peak Park is closed to the general public until the race wraps for the day. Most people who know that much stop there and assume the inconvenience is contained to the summit. It is not. A mile or so down the hill, San Elijo Park, the neighborhood's everyday dog park and splash pad, becomes the actual starting line, and its footprint gets hit first and hardest.

The Park You Know Is Closed. So Is the One You Don't Think About.

The event is the Double Peak Challenge, a 10K, 5K, and free Kids Trail Trot organized by Friends of San Marcos Parks and Recreation. The race itself starts and finishes at San Elijo Park, at 1105 Elfin Forest Road, which most residents know as the ballfields, the dog park, and the splash pad rather than as a race venue. Setup begins well before dawn. The city has confirmed that San Elijo Park's ballfield lights turn on at 5 a.m. so crews can stage the course, and that surrounding streets and the park itself will carry heavy parking restrictions all morning.

Meanwhile, up at 910 Double Peak Drive, the park stays closed to the public until the event concludes. That means no drive-up sunrise visit, no quick loop past the picnic shelter, no ten minutes at the telescope before work. If your Saturday habit lives at the summit, you already know to reroute. If your habit lives at San Elijo Park, the surprise usually arrives as lit ballfields and blocked street parking before you've had coffee.

Why the Course Climbs the Way It Does

The 10K route explains the two-park footprint. Runners set out from San Elijo Park and climb 1,176 feet to Double Peak's summit at 1,558 feet, which is the highest point in coastal North San Diego County. It is regularly described as one of the toughest 10K courses in the county, and the terrain backs that up: multi-surface trail, steep grades, and a payoff view at the halfway point that stretches toward the Pacific on a clear day.

That connector, from the neighborhood park up to the summit, is the same stretch a lot of residents use for a normal weekend hike or a dog walk with some elevation in it. On race day, it becomes a closed course for a few hours, which is the real reason the closure touches two separate park properties instead of one.

If You're Not Racing

For residents who are staying off the course entirely, the logistics worth knowing are straightforward:

• Packet pickup happens Wednesday, September 23, from 4 to 7 p.m. at North City, 250 N. City Drive, with free on-site parking.
• Race-day bib pickup opens at 6:15 a.m., but lines are likely for anyone who waits.
• Participant parking is available on surrounding streets and at San Elijo Middle School and San Elijo Elementary School.
• The lot adjacent to San Elijo Road is reserved for ADA parking and participant drop-off only. General parking is not permitted there.

If your own morning plans don't involve the race at all, the simplest move is to treat that stretch of Elfin Forest Road and the immediate blocks around San Elijo Park as off-limits until the event clears, and to save the Double Peak summit run for a different weekend.

Where the Entry Fees Actually Land

It is easy to file a road closure under pure inconvenience and move on, but the money behind this one comes back into the neighborhood in a fairly direct way. Proceeds support two organizations. Friends of San Marcos Parks and Recreation, established in 2013, works to enhance city park facilities and fund recreation scholarships, and it received the City of San Marcos SMILE Award this past March for its community service. The second beneficiary, The San Marcos Promise, doing business as Project Next, is a 501(c)(3) founded in 2014 that runs "Future Centers" across North County high schools, pairing students with career coaches for college and career planning.

So the closure that reroutes your Saturday is also the mechanism that funds the same parks and trails you use the other 364 days of the year, plus a career-readiness program for local students. That is a different way to think about a morning of blocked parking than simply waiting it out.

A Decade, Give or Take

How long the event has been running depends on which source you check. The race's own registration listing calls this its 11th annual event, while some recent local coverage framed it as the 10th year. Either way, it is close to its second decade as a fixture on the San Marcos calendar, and it sits inside a much larger trail system. The city manages more than 70 miles of trails across 38 parks and open spaces, overseen by the San Marcos Trails Advisory Committee, and that network recently got a funding boost from Measure Q, the one-cent local sales tax San Diego County voters in San Marcos approved in November 2024 with more than 60 percent support.

None of that changes what happens on the 26th. It does mean the closure is not an isolated inconvenience so much as a visible piece of how the city's trail infrastructure gets paid for and maintained.

Planning Around It

If you live close enough to Double Peak or San Elijo Park that this actually affects your Saturday, the easiest fix is simply to shift the routine for one morning. Take the dog to Jack's Pond Park instead, push your hike to the afternoon once the course clears, or use the early hours to grab breakfast somewhere that isn't competing with race traffic. The closure is real, but it's also short, contained to a single Saturday, and tied to something that funds the same amenities you'll be back to using the following weekend.

For anyone weighing what it actually means to live somewhere with this kind of everyday trail and park access, or just curious about how San Elijo Hills and the rest of San Marcos fit together day to day, the team at Riddle Home Team is always happy to talk through the neighborhood, race day quirks and all.