Two-Heel Drive

My days off are Sunday-Monday these days, which means I get a trails-to-myself day at least once a week if I want it.

Today strikes me as perfect one to check out Murietta Falls on the Ohlone Trail: a day with no rain in the forecast coming right after a major storm system has just blown through. The falls run only after major rainfall — and this year the ground was so dry after last year’s dry winter that most of the previous rains got soaked up by thirsty earth. But by now the run-off ought to be pretty strong, and the hills pretty green, and the lingering clouds over the hills creating photogenic scenes left and right.

Of course it’s 12 miles of hell out and back to get there, but some things simply must be done.

Pix & blather tonight.

Last weekend’s festivities in the wilds near Lake Shasta left me a bit glum at the prospect of finding new and interesting stuff to write about back in the in the comparatively mundane hills of the Bay Area. But then I remembered the adage of long-distance trekkers everywhere: Hike Your Own Hike. This is generally a handy rationalization for people who are either too fast or too slow to keep
pace with other members of their hiking group, but there is a grain of truth to it: your feet are the ones suffering all those miles, so you might as do it on your own terms, at your own pace, on a trail of your choosing. What it means for me this week is that I go back to one of my favorite haunts — the Ohlone Wilderness Trail — and you get more of the dead-tree pictures we’ve come to know and love.

I set off before sunrise for Del Valle Regional Park, trailhead of the 28-mile Ohlone Trail, of which I’ve hiked all but a five-mile stretch east of Rose Peak. The Ohlone Trail starts at Mission Peak on the west, goes east for eight miles to Sunol Regional Wilderness, then continues to Del Valle. Rose Peak, which tops out at around 3800 feet, is halfway between Del Valle and Sunol, leaving the fool in search of an ass-kicking 20-mile out-and-back a choice of two routes. I did the Sunol-to-Rose route a couple months back so I figured I’d try the Del Valle-to-Rose route yesterday.

The Sunol route requires 3,000 feet of climb spread pretty evenly over 10 miles. Grueling but not curse-the-fates cruel, like the Del Valle route. It requires 4,000 feet of climb in the first five miles, which destroys every shred of motivation to hike another 15. I ended up putting in about 14 miles, leaving a few miles of the trail unhiked. They’ll have to wait till my legs are stronger or I’m fleeing from the attendants trying to fetch me back to my warm room in the insane asylum.

Hiking from Del Valle has its prove-your-manly-ruggeness rewards, but it also provides that sense of being out there in the wilderness that I don’t get at many other trails with a neighboring population of several million humans. There’s always a strong breeze blowing across the ridges and nothing but hills and sky in every direction. Yeah, you suffer, and the hills make you wonderif it’s worth all the trouble. But the hilltops reaffirm the decision to hike on.

OK, let’s look at some pictures.

I had excellent clouds all day. The dead trees will be there for years to come but the clouds are never the same, and I never see them at the same time of day, so there’s always something snapshot-worthy happening.

I think this is actually a live tree that has lost all its leaves. After about 10,000 pictures I’m finally starting to understand why these kinds of shots work:
The morning sun is low in the sky, giving the clouds a certain glow and provides a stark contrast to the nearby blue sky.

Our fall colors in the Bay Area are green and brown, but there are some exceptions.

Lots o’ leaf litter along the trail.

The breeze paintbrushes wisps of clouds across the sky.

Sometimes the sun and the vapor trails create interesting imagery.

The same two vapor trails, from a different section of the trail.

The trail has the occasional rock formation; the layer of clouds in the background is providing an overcast afternoon for all those suckers back there in civilization.

I was resting my feet, sitting next to a trail marker when I took this pic.

Another put-the-sun-to-work-for-you shot: The afternoon sun shining from behind these leaves gave them a nifty glow.

Did those birds really just crash into each other, I wondered?

I was hiking along the Ohlone Wilderness Trail, hearing the occasional raptor
screeches from high above me, when I saw what appeared to be a midair collision
at the edge of my field of vision. This was about 12 miles into an 8-hour, 19.2-miile
beast of a trek I had chosen because, well, the weather was cool and the drive
was short, compared to some of the hikes I’ve undertaken this summer.

So I stop and stare straight up at these two big, broad-winged beasts — a
golden eagle and a hawk, I’m guessing — soaring in circles on the warm-air
currents, and I realize they’re trying to maneuver into attack position. Like
warships of the 18th century, they’re big, powerful and hostage to the winds.
They execute impressive twists and turns and sure enough, they collide once
again. After that they resumed soaring, circling and screeching, and I left
them to their aerial combat.

Awhile later I see another hawk swoop in for a landing in the tall grass near
the trail. I figure a mouse’s day is about to take a terrifying turn for the
worse, but the bird sees me and flies off. Along about Mile 17.2, when the soles
of my feet are seeking U.N. sanctions against my brain, I take consolation in
the thought that I may have saved a field mouse’s life.

Scenes like this make me grateful my vision relies on the human eye rather
than, say, a cheap digital camera, which always seems to be turned off and packed
away someplace when all the cool stuff happens. As usual I’ve relied on taking
pictures of things which, being inanimate, are content to stand still while
I get the camera focused.

Posting this picture of the "W Tree" should not be construed as an
endorsement of any political figures currently in the news.

OK, so more about the hike. I started out at the headquarters of the Sunol
Regional Wilderness and hiked east on a gravel road for a couple miles to get
warmed up for the hills to be climbed. I’d end up far higher than the hills
pictured here. My goal was Rose Peak, which is 10 miles from the park HQ and
3,400 feet higher. I trimmed off four-tenths of a mile by starting from the
far eastern edge of the parking lot, then headed down the mostly-flat road past
Little Yosemite (so named because it’s a little bit like Yosemite: it has running
water, a canyon and a few big rocks).

I got on the Ohlone Wilderness Trail here, at the border of Sunol’s backpacking
area. It’s a brutally steep slog up a hillside from here, but it’s over quickly.

The rocks along the trail are impressive, but not particularly photogenic in
the way trees are.

Here’s one such tree.

The hike to Rose Peak is mostly uphill, except for one plunge into a valley
about 2.5 miles from peak. From here it’s another thousand feet of uphill drudgery.
The summit is not visible till you’re almost right on top of it, so there’s
no goal to keep your mind focused. I just thought back to all the hellish hills
I hiked at Henry Coe State Park, which taught me to never think of the top of
the hill until you’re dead certain you’re there.

A tree stump near the Rose Peak summit, though summit is a bit of a misnomer.
It’s really just the high point on this particular ridge. It’s not a "mountain"
like, say, Mount Diablo. The best time to be here is in late fall, winter or
early spring, when there’s less haze over the flatlands. I camped out near here
last year and could see San Jose, Pleasanton and Mt. Diablo in the distance.

Another picturesque, dearly departed tree, not far from where I interrupted
the hawk’s lunch.

Goat Rock is one of the more more impressive features along the Ohlone Trail.

The view through a hole in a hollow tree. No elves were sighted.

Just a garter snake, no reason to be alarmed, folks.

Another big rock formation near the entrance to the Sunol backpackers’ area.

This was my longest one-day hike to date. I came home tired and footsore, happy
to have proved I could handle a near-20-mile distance with 3,000 feet of elevation
gain, and thankful for cool ocean breezes that made the whole walk doable in
August.

Though the countryside around here has become familiar enough that the wow
factor has worn off, I still get a kick out of walking in these hills. They
are not spectacular like the Sierra peaks, but they are, for want of a better
adjective, scenic. And addictive, which would explain the urge to hike past
the point of sanity in them.

If you can find your way through Livermore to the Del Valle Regional Park,
you earn the privilege of slogging up and down some of the most ass-busting
hills in the Bay Area along the Ohlone Wilderness Trail, which starts in Livermore
and ends in Fremont, 28 miles later. I’ve hiked all but five miles of it, camped
out along it, learned new definitions of sweat-drenched misery along it. Need
I say it’s one of my favorite trails in the area?

The Fremont end of the trail is at Mission Peak, which always draws crowds.
The Del Valle end is far less crowded, and the views are spectacular from about
20 minutes into the hike. In practically no time you’re out there in the wilds,
usually by yourself. That’s the upside. The downside is the hills. They are
evil. It’s like they resent being trampled upon or something.

Here’s a look at one of the hills. The first couple miles are up, up, up, and,
for fun, up some more. All old ranching roads, unfortunately, but you’ve got
to go this way to get to the good parts.

The trees out here rule.

The first ridge tops out at about 2400 feet, rising 1700 from the trailhead
in the park. From here it goes back down to a creek crossing at 1800 feet.

Trees fill the gulch.

Small puddles at the crossing.

From here begins the Big Burn, another 1600 feet of climb. It zigzags up the
hillside through dense brush and forest. It’s excruciating, but the scenery
is to die for.

More of them cool trees.

Perhaps the greatest dead tree in all the hikes I’ve gone on. Someday I’ll
come up here and spend an afternoon shooting it from a hundred angles.

I paused for lunch by this pond, just under 5 miles from the trailhead. Then
it started to rain so I headed back.

Rainbow! My Irish genes make it difficult to resist the urge to go looking
for a pot o’ gold at the end of it.

The grass up here is positively blond, a remarkable shade of yellow that the
camera doesn’t do justice to.

Back down the hill, where rain and fog awaited.

Back up the hill, where clouds fill the valleys. From here it’s downhill all the way back to Del Valle, which is a good thing, because the ol’ legs haven’t got a whole lot of up left in them by now.

I hiked this trail last February on the way to Murietta Falls. Here’s my writeup. The falls are still dry, I’m guessing … the time to go check ‘em out is after a week’s worth of rain.