# Marathon Miles: My Favorite Running Routes Through Portola Springs and the Great Park
Meta title: Best Running Trails Near Portola Springs & Great Park (52) Meta description: A marathoner's guide to the running routes I actually use near Portola Springs and the Great Park — Hicks Canyon, JOST, and the Great Park Loop. (149) URL slug: running-trails-portola-springs-great-park
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If you're training for a race and living anywhere near Portola Springs or the Great Park, the three routes I use most are the Hicks Canyon Trail, the Jeffrey Open Space Trail, and the Great Park Loop out to the Balloon — and as of this month, one of them just got a genuinely useful upgrade. I've spent a lot of years logging miles as a marathon runner, and long before I'm thinking about square footage or school boundaries, I'm usually thinking about where I'm running that weekend. So this one's less about real estate and more about the actual reason I love where I live and work.
Hicks Canyon Trail: my go-to easy long run
Hicks Canyon Trail is the one I default to when I want a straightforward out-and-back without much thinking involved. It's about 4 miles round trip, starting from Hicks Canyon Community Park, and it's really two trails running side by side along the old Hicks Canyon Wash — a wide dirt path for runners and horses on one side, a paved lane for bikes and strollers on the other, both shaded by rows of mature eucalyptus. It connects to the Peters Canyon Trail along the 261 toll road and eventually spills out onto Portola, which makes it easy to extend into a longer loop if you're not ready to turn around yet.
It's flat, it's shaded, and it's forgiving on the legs, which is exactly what I want on a recovery day or an easy long run when I'm not trying to prove anything to myself.
Jeffrey Open Space Trail, now with a new mile
The Jeffrey Open Space Trail — JOST, if you want to sound like you know the acronym — runs about five miles from Quail Hill in the south up to just past Portola Parkway in the north, and it's basically an outdoor museum: inlaid concrete panels and mosaics tracing 500 years of Irvine Ranch history, a couple of stone tunnels, public art, informal botanical gardens. I've run sections of it more times than I can count and still notice something new.
What's genuinely exciting is what just opened. On August 11, the City finished the new JOST Bicycle & Pedestrian Bridge — at nearly 1,200 feet long, it's the largest bike and pedestrian bridge in Irvine, carrying the trail over Walnut Avenue, the Jeffrey Road Park & Ride, and the I-5 Freeway. It was part of a trail extension project the City started in March 2024, funded in part by $14.5 million in state money and another roughly $5 million from Caltrans. Practically, it means a stretch of trail that used to force you onto surface streets now flows straight through — which for anyone stringing together a longer training run is exactly the kind of unglamorous infrastructure that actually changes your route.
There's more coming, too — a second, still-to-be-built bridge over Portola Parkway will eventually extend JOST north toward the Gateway Preserve, once that project is finished alongside the new Gateway Village community going in there. I'll believe the timeline when I see the ribbon cut, but it's a good sign for anyone who runs this trail regularly.
The Great Park Loop and the Balloon via Bosque Trail
Inside the Great Park itself, my two go-tos are the Great Park Loop — a tight 2.3-mile loop with barely any elevation change, good for a lunchtime shakeout or intervals — and the longer Balloon via Bosque Trail, which runs close to 5 miles past the ponds and sports fields out to the Great Park Balloon. If you've never gone up in the balloon, it's worth doing once just for the view — 400 feet up, a 360-degree look at Orange County that on a clear day stretches something like 40 miles. As a run, though, the real draw is the variety: open fields, water, and enough distance to actually get into a rhythm.
Great Park Sports Complex, for the days I want to move faster
When I want structured speed work instead of just logging miles, I head to the Great Park Sports Complex. The paved paths around the fields are wide, well-lit, and long enough to string together intervals without constantly doubling back — and there's something motivating about running past actual competitive athletes training on the fields next to you.
Stringing it together for a longer run
On a weekend when I want real mileage, my usual move is to start on Hicks Canyon, connect onto JOST for the middle miles, and finish with a loop or two around the Great Park before I'm done. It's not a single marked route — it's three trail systems that happen to sit close enough together in this part of Irvine that you can link them without much street running in between, which is honestly rare for a city this size.
FAQ
What's the best running trail near Portola Springs? Hicks Canyon Trail is the closest and easiest starting point — a flat, roughly 4-mile out-and-back from Hicks Canyon Community Park that connects toward Portola Parkway.
How long is the Jeffrey Open Space Trail? About five miles total, running from Quail Hill in the south to just past Portola Parkway in the north, with a new bridge segment over Walnut Avenue and I-5 that opened August 11, 2026.
Is the Great Park good for running? Yes — the Great Park Loop is a flat 2.3-mile loop, the Balloon via Bosque Trail runs close to 5 miles out to the Great Park Balloon, and the Great Park Sports Complex has extensive paved paths good for speed work.
Can you run between Portola Springs and the Great Park on trails? You can link most of it — Hicks Canyon connects toward Portola Parkway, and from there JOST and the Great Park's own trail network let you cover a lot of ground without much time on surface streets.
Come run it with me
If you're moving to this part of Irvine and trails like these are part of why, I get it completely — it's a big part of why I love working here too. Happy to talk homes near any of these routes, or just tell you where to park for a Saturday long run. [Reach out anytime](/contact.html), or take a look at what's currently available in [Portola Springs](/neighborhoods-portolasprings.html) and the [Great Park Neighborhoods](/neighborhoods-greatpark.html).
Social caption: Training run or house hunt, this part of Irvine delivers either way. Here are the three trails I actually run near Portola Springs and the Great Park — including a brand-new bridge that just opened up a mile I used to have to skip.
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NOTE (accuracy/judgment calls): - Kept all personal running claims general (routes I use, how they feel to run) rather than inventing specific race results, times, or dates, since I have no verified source for Chris's individual race history. - Distance/elevation figures for Hicks Canyon Trail, JOST, the Great Park Loop, and the Balloon via Bosque Trail are drawn from trail-tracking sources (AllTrails and similar); these can vary slightly by measurement method, so I used rounded figures ("about," "close to") rather than false precision. - Kept the two JOST bridges (the Aug 11 Walnut Ave/I-5 bridge vs. the future Portola Parkway bridge) clearly distinct, consistent with Monday's post, to avoid implying the trail-to-Gateway-Village connection already exists. - No new Chris Kwon Zillow sale was available to spotlight this week.
