Stairs, hills, and more hills. About 9,000 feet of vertical packed into 28 miles. It begins at 8:00AM at Old Mill Park (Throckmorton Avenue, Cascade Way, & Old Mill Street intersection), in Mill Valley, California. Within a few hundred yards the course heads up three flights of stairs as tall as a fifty-story building, and up some more through an old horse ranch to Windy Gap. Then it plunges down into Muir Woods, across Redwood Creek, and begins a tough grind up through both trees and grasslands over trail sections named "Dynamite", "The Hogsback", "The Rainforest", and "Cardiac." At the top of Cardiac, the course levels out with panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean before it plunges down over the rocks, roots, and stairs of "Steep Ravine" and the discouragingly steep but short climb up "Insult Hill." Finally, as the course follows the relatively gentle slope of The Moors toward the ocean, Stinson Beach is in sight a mile ahead.