This website was set up only in 2009, and except for a few pictures of San Francisco in the old days, most of our photographs come from June 2009 or later. Hiker Tony Holiday (who blogs at Stairways are Heaven) shared with us some pictures from before that. These are from 2007; in an earlier post, we published pictures from 2004, 2005, and 2006 to recall the beauty and density of the forest before most of the “work” started and before most of the tree-felling started. We publish them here with permission.
A HIKE IN JANUARY 2007
These pictures, taken on a hike in 2007, show the lush green forest in the early days of the “work” when the main objective was opening the trails. This was something everyone could get behind.
The forest, green and lush in January as it was in May. The forest gets rain in winter, and cloud forest precipitation in summer. It’s green year-round.
“The tank picture below shows the original trailhead for the upper Historic Trail. Later, they opened the trail right off the road as it is now.” – Tony Holiday
The forest is always green except where it’s opened up and dries out. The picture below shows the summit, which is the driest part of the mountain. Even in winter, the grasses quickly dry.
While Sutro Stewards and UCSF were mainly building trails, they got a lot of public support. But later, when they supported destroying trees and the forest’s ecology, forest-lovers realized the need to work to save this beautiful ecosystem.
Mount Sutro Forest That Was 
Pingback: Lest We Forget: Sutro Forest – 2004, 2005, 2006 | Save Mount Sutro Forest
As usual, very well said. Thanks for combining pix and words to show how it looked back then to compare with what we are seeing these days, to our horror. It does not make any sense to dry up this unique, lush forest the way they are doing so much of these days. Thanks so much for your continuing efforts to save this forest and other green spaces and trees from ongoing wrongful destruction.