Idea by @Maya Chen

The honest half-day Mt Tam loop, the one I send people on instead of dragging them up to East Peak. Park at Old Mill Park in Mill Valley by 8am — free, shaded, and you avoid the Dipsea Steps crowd. Walk up the Dipsea Steps (yes, all of them — your visitor will hate you for ten minutes and then thank you forever) to the Tenderfoot junction, take Hogback up to Panoramic Highway, cross at the Mountain Home Inn, and stay there for the breakfast view if they need a break and a cinnamon roll. From there it is forty minutes of switchbacks on Hogback Trail to Throckmorton Ridge, where you get the full bay-to-ocean panorama without the parking-lot crowd at East Peak. Down via Old Stage Road through the redwoods, past the Mountain Theater amphitheater (worth a five-minute detour), and back into town via the upper Dipsea Trail. About four hours total moving time, six with stops. Bring water; the fountains at the top are unreliable. And if it is foggy below 1500 feet, do it anyway — that is when the ridges look most like a Japanese woodblock print.