Lower Purgatory Trailhead

San Marcos is lucky to have a nice trail system, beautifully maintained by the San Marcos Greenbelt Alliance. Trails can be hiked out & back, or make a loop. Point to point is a nice option too. Check out the SMGA website for trail maps. Plenty of parking at both Upper and Lower Purgatory trailheads, although on beautiful days parking can fill up. Pit toilets at both trailheads.

This past January and February my Australian Cattle Dog, Marcos and I went out on the trails 56 days. He chased deer, bobcats, wild boar, and one rabbit. We loved the cooler weather and the trails are fantastic.

Rode Dante, and Beatrice trails. Trails were technical but not too bad. Lots of rock gardens with nice sized rocks. Flow was good as well.

I'd recommend riding Beatrice starting from Nimrod rather than starting from Dante (west side) since it's downhill from Nimrod.

Only downside I found in this trail was that people don't clean up after their dogs. Trails were riddled with doggie bombs.

This was very nice change of pace. Bring confortable hiking shoes, water for a long walks.... especially now in the summer. It was interesting to navigate. Lots of people on the trail and many of them claimed they were loat. Tons on mountain bikers so pay attention if you wear earbuds. I liked did about half abd that was around 5 miles there and back. The good picture of the map on the way in. It will come in handy.

Non-local here. Nice trail but we had trouble with our dogs at the end.. Spent the weekend in San Marcos with family and 2 dogs. Morning temp was like mid 60s so we decided to find a trail to take the dogs on a walk. We had walked one trail on a previous trip but found one closer this time by our hotel. We liked the scan option for trail leads. They seemed accurate. We find our way through even though the trails were poorly marked in places. So we ended up hiking longer than expected. Our large dogs are mostly indoors so getting out hiking is a treat and they love it. But this day we had a bad outcome hiking here. We were almost 2.5 hrs in and finding our way out and the dogs started slowing down. Trail was shaded and rocky with an occasional walk outside in the sun. We were headed out when both dogs stopped walking. So to our surprise both dogs paws pads were pink and peeling. Bad enough that they had to be carried out the rest of the way back to our vehicles. The 60lb was carried out ok but our 90lb needed 2 people to carry him. These dogs have been hiking trails many times before and never have had this happen. We will definitely pass on this trail in the future.