Two-Heel Drive

I’m thinking if you live in Orinda you pretty much have to belong to a hiking club (it’s a village in the hills east of Berkeley), to catch up on who’s not talking to whom and such. But anyway: The Orinda Hiking Club is a serious organization that leads not-for-weenies hikes every weekend around the Bay Area. It also has a $20 annual membership fee, which may seem quaint in the Internet era where Everything Must Be Free but you have to admit that obliging club members to pony up a bit of cash obliges them to act more like, well, members of the club.

And this is pretty cool: The club is organizing a west-to-east California through-hike (Waddell Beach to Squaw Valley to King’s Beach at Lake Tahoe).

Meetup.com has scads of hiking groups, including quite a few in the Bay Area. These are the most promising ones I scouted out this morning:

• Oakland Dog Hikers — This group charges a $2 fee. Next outing: Equinox Hike - Full Moon Hike — 6pm (March 21) in Berkeley at the Steam Train Staging Area of Tilden Park.
• “Let’s hike and maybe take a break if we get tired” — Sounds like the title of a discussion thread that morphed into a hiking club, something that could only happen on the Internet. Next outing: Diablo Foothills - Livorna (4.4 mi, 400 ft) Contra Costa County — 10 a.m. Saturday (March 22). This one’s not taking on new RSVPs (just as well; there’s 49 already). This group looks to be super popular, so you’d have to sign up early when hikes get announced. Also: be sure to read the group’s “about us” page.
• Super Fabulicious Hiking and Outdoor Adventure Group — Next outing: Morgan Territory 13mi. 3000ft. — 10 a.m. March 29 (a Saturday). This group also has 25 RSVPs for an overnighter April 12 at Sunol Wilderness … wonder where they’re gonna put ‘em all.
• The San Jose Hiking Meetup Group — Next outing: St. Joseph’s Hill OSP - Dog Friendly Hike — 10 a.m. Wednesday (that is, tomorrow).

Well, if you want some company on your next hike, you ought to be able to find some with one of these groups.

This sounds interesting: Marin Moonshiners Monthly Moonlight Hike.

Experience the sunset and moonrise from beautiful Mt. Tam. This monthly 3 mile hike takes place during the full moon. Enjoy socializing and picnicing by the campfire.

We’ll start hiking near Four Corners, then take a break to eat and toast the sunset and full moon rise. From there we will continue downhill to Muir Beach for a campfire and then a short walk to the Pelican Inn for a brew and some socializing. We’ll carpool up the hill to our cars at 9:00pm.

I’m in favor of any hike which has beer at the end.

Next one is Friday, Oct. 26. Might already be full (there’s a 30-hiker limit) but the RSVP contact is John Bennus at (415) 331-0100

Do flash mobs even exist anymore? Anyway… I thought it’d be interesting to post a link to one of the local hikes listed on meetup.com. A group based in Mountain View called “Let’s hike and maybe take a break if we get tired” has over a thousand members. This group has a hike from Palomarin to Ocean Lake planned Saturday already has 50 people signed up (the organizer has, thoughtfully enough, closed it off to further RSVPs).

Any thoughts on taking out a group this large? Not my cup of tea, though I like the idea that it would drive the creator of Bay Area Linkup crazy (BA Linkup hike discussions inevitably turn to the antics of its CEO, invariably described as a mad genius/control freak who must be tolerated because his site is so cool because it has so many rules mandating proper behavior — something the Church Lady might create if she were into building databases. It would be mad fun to create a club whose sole purpose is crashing BA Linkup events).

Of course the storied Intrepid Northern California Hikers have solved the problem of what to do with a really large hiking group: if the guy on the trail next to you starts in with an annoying recantation of the microchip he built last week, you just walk faster. After 11 years, only the “just walk faster” part survives.

(By now you’re probably getting a sense of why I usually end up hiking by myself).

Today’s sites worth seeing: Tribe.net and meetup.com.

I posted a note flogging our new Bay Area focus at Tribe.net’s Bay Area Hiking tribe and got a reply from a guy offering to lead anthropological hikes around the area. Of course the best place to study humans is at a crowded bar with the music blasting; what you learn about people in the wilderness is their tendency to foul it up, but anyway, I’m thinking this might be a good place to find some folks to hike with. (Tribe’s vibe is sort of willfully funky — think Burning Man — which is fine in moderate doses.)

Meetup.com has a pretty slick interface for matching regions and interests. At the home page, you type in your zip code in one field and your interest in another and voila — folks in your neck of the woods who’re into the same stuff (this may force you to confront the fact that whose who share your interests are, well, much like you, but nothing’s free in life).

The SCMTA maintains trails at Big Basin and Castle Rock state parks, plus the Skyline-to-the-Sea trail. They also have hikes most Sundays — scroll down to the bottom of the page to find links to photos from their hikes; somebody there knows his or way around an F-stop and shutter setting (I know of these things by rumor and reputation only; I’m a full-automatic guy myself). Membership starts at $7.50.

I bumped into some of these folks one morning while waiting to meet some people from another hiking group. We went to Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. ; they went to Waddell Beach at Big Basin.

This group’s been around since 1969, so they probably remember what San Jose was like before the tech boom turned it into a flattened maze of subdivisions and office parks.

A quick Google search yields a host of local groups leading hikes in the region. I’ve gone on hikes with these:

• Bay Area Linkup: This is where Winehiker Russ organizes all many of his hikes. There’s a monthly fee after a free trial period. Just so’s you’ll know: Linkup rules are enforced with a zeal that would give the Church Lady a screaming orgasm.
• Intrepid Northern California Hikers (INCH): Notorious for stupendously strenuous hikes. They hike hard, they hike fast — they do wait around for stragglers but if you’re slow, don’t expect anybody to hang back to keep you company. If you’re into brisk 20-milers with 4,000 feet of elevation gain, INCH is your kind of club. INCH hike write-ups are often breezy and entertaining.
• FOMFOK: Mike Wimble and his wife, Kathy, of Sunnyvale lead mostly moderate hikes around the South Bay and in the Santa Cruz mountains. I’ve hiked with them a bunch of times because a) they’re good company on the trail; and b) they hike at my pace, which could be charitably described as “comfortable.” Mike always hauls a big camera along so I know I’ll have time to stop and take pictures.
• East Bay Casual Hiking: I went on at least one outing with this group when I was just getting into hiking. It seems well-organized. Most of the hikes are closer to Contra Costa County rather than, say, Fremont or Hayward in the southern end of the East Bay.
• Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter: Steve Sergeant of The Wildebeat hangs out here and leads backpacking outings. Sierra Club folks are known for keeping a brisk pace — I once hiked with a couple of ultra-marathoners who described being passed by Sierra Club hikers during one of their races.
• NorthCA_Hiking: A Yahoo Groups club that goes on hikes and backpacking outings around Sacramento and the Sierra. Very welcoming folks who had me along for a couple overnighters last summer. You have to request to be allowed into the group — this keeps the spammers away. Several members are from the Bay Area.

More clubs who have Web sites (props to this page for assembling these):

Bay Area Jewish Singles Hiking Club
Bay Area Orienteering Club.

Berkeley Hiking Club

Berkeley Path Wanderers Association

Coastwalk

Contra Costa Hills Club

Hayward Hiking Club

Montclair Hiking Club

North Bay Christian Hikers


Orinda Hiking Club


Pacific Trail Society

San Francisco Hiking Club


Stanford Outing Club

Women’s East Bay Hiking Club

Now you can’t say you can’t find anybody to hike with.