On Saturday morning me, Alex, Declan, Lewis and Wee Steve finally made it up Mount Diablo, the tallest peak in the Bay Area at 3849 feet (not far off the height of Ben Nevis - the tallest mountain in Britain!)
With a planned departure time of 8am, we didn't make it out of Newark until about 10, probably thanks to the night before and Declan's state, and much to the annoyance of myself, Alex and especially Wee Steve.
First, an interesting fact: Mount Diablo was used as a reference point for the early pioneers while mapping California, and as such, much of the map grids in use today for California and some of Nevada and Oregon are relative to the location of this peak. In a way, this mountain is the centre of California. On a good day, views of much of Northern California can be seen, even as far as the Sierras and Yosemite.
Our route (which we, well I, had actually planned the day before!) started at the North side of
Mount Diablo State Park, at Mitchell Canyon. We set off from the car park at 11.30am. The plan was to walk along up through the valley east of Eagle Peak, traverse Bald Ridge and finally climb to the peak, to be back about 6 hours later. We only ended up following this very loosely.
We started out on a small trail (no bikes thank you) slowly rising up the side of a valley, with lush meadows and views of forested areas and Walnut Creek below. The sun was shining, Alex was talking crap (literally), Lewis was lugging his tripod around and Steve was ready with his matches to deal with any tick attacks at a moment's notice. I was busy trying to navigate us up this mountain, using far too much brain power to convert between miles to km and feet to metres. Damn imperial system. What fools invented that anyway?
We quickly realized we'd missed a very obscure turning to go through the valley and we ended up on the very steep and land-slidey path up the side of Eagle Peak. Already there were some incredible views below us - so much green, and lots of beautiful wild flowers. Spring is definitely the time to be walking in California. Such a contrast to all dry, brown landscape we'd seen the previous summer. There were quite a lot of walkers around Eagle Peak - good wholesome people who enjoy exploring the wilderness and like to get an actual sense of achievement by not driving to the top like the tourists on the main peak later on (grrr)!
After a close shave with a very bold hover fly :-), we got to the top at about 2pm where we stopped for a lunch of french bread, salami and cheese. More great views and some really big eagles flying around the appropriately-named peak.
We headed along the ridge leading to Mount Diablo - again slippery rocky paths surrounded by some incredible wild flowers turning later into densely-growing bushes. We got to the junction of Murchio Gap where we had a choice to take the fire road around Bald Ridge followed by a steep climb, or go right over Bald Ridge on a very small path. There are loads of these fire roads around, to provide access for firefighters should a fire break out in the wild. They are generally reasonably flat and wide. Not quite as fun though, so we opted for Bald Ridge. It turned out we couldn't see much from the ridge as it was covered in forest.
Once over Bald Ridge, we were almost at the summit. The museum, no doubt filled with freeloading, lazy, car-driving tourists was in sight. The path we were taking (now the Summit Trail) led us all around the peak to the south side. There were views of the entire East Bay from here, although it was a bit hazy. We had some fun clambering around an outbreaking of rocks then continued our way up the final stretch. We were now surrounded by all those drive-to-the-top people who didn't seem as friendly as those we'd met earlier. Not local you see.
When we got to the car park almost at the top, we realized we'd lost Lewis somewhere along the way. He'd been trailing quite a lot of the way, stopping to take photos and set up his tripod (reminded me of constantly waiting around for Steve on holiday in Europe with him and Nick two summers ago). We waited for a while, I went back to look for him, spoke to some people who had indeed seen a tall man in a blue bandana taking photos, but I couldn't find him. Best plan was to go right to the top and hope to meet him there. Still no sign of him, but some good views - could even see the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. By now we were getting quite agitated about where Lewis was and the fact it was 4pm and we ought to be getting back if we didn't want to be walking around this mountain in the dark. He eventually popped up, took a few more photos and we began heading down.
We went down a much faster route, using Fire Roads most of the way and going through Mitchell Canyon back to the car park. It was getting a bit cold on the way down so we really moved and managed to make it by 6.30. Perfect timing. 3000ft of descending in a couple hours wasn't too easy on the old feet or knees though!
An excellent walk anyway. Must have been about 12 miles, with around 4000ft of climbing (20km, 1300m) so doing it in 7 hours was a good job. I definitely think doing it from Mitchell Canyon was a wise choice - more challenging and a wider variety of terrain and views than just doing the round route mostly along Fire Roads would have given us. It was good to be doing a serious walk. It had been far too long. Mt Whitney next? (tallest in the 50 states) Maybe not quite yet, but hopefully in June some time. Next up I think will be Mt Tamalpais, which has been recommended to me by several people now.
Labels: adventuring, california, usa
1 Comments:
Truly the saddest episode. However they did follow it up last night with one of the funniest, the one where fry spends his tax return on 100 cups of coffee and time slows down for him.
posted @ Tue May 10, 09:50:00 PMWaiter: More coffee sir?
Fry: No, Yes, put the coffee down, get away from me.
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