Two-Heel Drive

Posted today. The intro:

December is a gift to hikers drawn to Mount Diablo, the peak dominating the East Bay landscape.

It’s a month when occasional rains wash smog from the sky and open amazing vistas (you’ll see snowcapped Sierra peaks on the best days). A hint of green returns to the state park’s hillsides, but the thirsty ground absorbs most of the moisture, so the trails lack the ankle-deep muck of the later rainy season.

The Diablo summit area has great views, easy trails and a nice museum. It’s a natural starting point, but there’s a lot more park beyond the peak. Trails twist through rich oak woodlands and rocky canyons. The Rock City area has some of the most curious sandstone formations in the Bay Area (copiously decorated by industrious delinquents, alas).

Being a mountain, Diablo practically begs you to climb it, floor to ceiling, from near sea level to its 3,849-foot peak. Do it if you must, just be mindful of the mountain you’re missing on the way to that tiny bit at the top.

Read the whole thing for trail recommendation.

Seth Adams of Savemountdiablo.org, which just issued a massive new hiking map of the area around Mount Diablo State Park, passed along some of his favorite Diablo hikes.

… you’ve done some nice hikes, the loop around the summit is one of my favorites. Mary Bowerman is SMD’s founder, by the way.

But not my favorite. (Oyster Point, Knobcone Point, and Riggs Canyon)

We do the Diablo Trail (shown for the first time on our new map) each year as a four day trip–Four Days Diablo, and I love the 2-4 days, the 2nd especially, out to Oyster Point (you have to climb to the ridge on either side of the trail for the best views, then drop into the Jackass Canyon section of Riggs Canyon.)

Knobcone Point is also a favorite — more like an Arizona-Utah scene than anywhere else in the Bay Area — and you were so close on your trip out to Balancing Rock. BR sits just below the top of a ridge which hides incredible wind caves more easily seen from the Blackhawk Road trail out to where the Oyster Point trail starts. Of course Vasco Caves has even bigger
caves, in a different more isolated way.

Riggs Canyon is pretty special too — our Tassajara Creek Trail is one of the best new trails built in the Bay Area in years.

Have you checked out Round Valley? Most beautiful valley in the East Bay.

Those are all on the list now.

Long as we’re on the subject of Mount Diablo, I’ve been told the Trail Through Time, which has segments at Rock City and the summit, will become a 6.5-mile path to the top in 2008.

You don’t hear much clamor among hikers to check out the Rock City area at Mount Diablo State Park. The rocks are very cool, but they’re also covered in the initials, names and graduation years of lord knows how many industrious teen-agers with too much time on their hands. The upside is, kids who have the tenacity to dig their names an inch into the soft rock of a former seabed are probably well prepared for a life of corporate salt-minery. One of them is probably your boss.

The etchings reminded me of tattoos — one guy swore his undying devotion to Tanya, who no doubt ran off with his boss; perhaps in his grief it never occurred to him to return to Rock City and correct the record, which was, alas, etched in stone.

As for the hiking: It’s not all bad once you get away from Rock City. I took off down the less-populous stretch of the Trail Through Time for a little over a mile, turned left at the Devil Slide Trail, headed up to the Sycamore Trail in search of something called Balancing Rock. I had visions of one of those slabs that always seems to turn Wile E. Coyote into an accordion. The reality was a bit of letdown, but it was in very quiet, remote corner of the park with nary a soul around.

I eventually looped my way back to Rock City, climbed a pinnacle called Sentinel Rock and wandered back the way I came. Might’ve gotten seven miles in by the time I turned back for San Jose.

Well, lets look at the pictures.

There’s a huge stone formation near the Trail Through Time, heading south out of Rock City. This guy was huffing and puffing his way up the stone face. I opted to move along before he and his pals started volunteering me for rope duty.

So if you take the Trail Through Time down to the Devils Slide Trail, hang a left and make your way to Knobcone Point Road and turn right, down a ways you’ll find this informative sign revealing you’re at the Diablo Meridian. Of course you will have forgotten your surveying tools and this information will be of no use whatsoever. But it’s nice to know.

Incidentally, this area out here is probably the wildest in this section of the park. You can’t see subdivisions — it’s pretty much all hills and sky. Nice if you’re into that sorta thing (and you wouldn’t be here otherwise, right?)

This is the Balancing Rock — about three miles from Rock City on the route I took. The utter lack of gawking crowds speaks for itself, I suppose.

So hiked back the way I came for awhile, but stayed on the Knobcone trail till it hit Curry Point, a handy parking area for bikers in this area. Down the road a ways, somebody had put in this way-cool rock-balance installation. The guy on the mountain bike has one of those high-tech one-fork front ends holding his forward wheel. Looks odd but I suppose it works fine.

So I wandered back to Rock City and did some more explorations along the Trail Through Time. You can’t see as many of the human carvings from this distance, which is all the better. At least the cavemen had the foresight to paint on their walls.

This is the approach to the top of Sentinel Rock. This whole area around here is full of nooks and crannies, which does provide good exercise.

You know me and my tree pictures.

Since I’m writing about Mount Diablo for my Mercury News column, I headed up to the summit (much more painless in the car) to check out the one-mile loop near the summit. The Fire Interpretive Trail is dedicated to one Mary Bowerman, who’d have to be proud to have her name on this patch of dirt. If the view’s unobstructed, it’s probably one of the nicest easy one-milers in the Bay Area.

OK, one more tree pic just to keep me in practice.

Final assessment: The best hiking at Diablo is around the summit, or in some of the deep canyons in the spring when the falls are running. The formations at Rock City are remarkable, but the teen-scratching all every free inch of rock is bound to get on your nerves. The hike out to Balancing Rock and back is a nice six miles if you retrace your steps. (This’ll all make sense if you’ve got your trusty Mount Diablo Trail Map handy.)

I’m heading up to Mount Diablo to check out the Rock City area today (duty calls; this’ll be for another column in the Mercury News). It’s my last major section of the park still unexplored. Tons more minor ones, plus all the Morgan Territory and nearby parks. Too bad it’s 60 miles of driving to get there.

If the stars align I’ll post pics & chatter tonight; otherwise, tomorrow for sure (because I know your lives are hanging on when my next post arrives).

It’s the Seventh Annual Trail Adventure weekend:

The Contra Costa County high point is the scene of several organized hikes Saturday and the seventh annual Mount Diablo Trail Adventure on Sunday.

Included in the Sunday festivities are a marathon, a half-marathon, a 10K run, a 10K speed hike and an educational family hike that begins at Castle Rock Park in Walnut Creek. Participants in the family jaunt will climb fire roads up the slopes of Diablo and finish at Castle Rock.

Besides the spectacle of runners and hikers, organizers are offering live music before and after the competitions at Mount Diablo State Park.

Wouldn’t want to be a tarantula out on those trails on Saturday or Sunday.

Vindu wondered why on earth I’d want to do this hike again. Fourteen miles later, I was wondering too.

It is a hike that must be done once. Mount Diablo dominates the East Bay landscape, visible from pretty much every high ridge across Contra Costa and Alameda counties, and most of the east-facing ridges in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. Marin has Mount Tampalpais, which has excellent redwood forests and expansive views from its summit, but as hills go it’s a piker compared to Diablo, which is over a thousand feet taller. No matter how high you might be, if you see Diablo from the trail it’s whispering in your ear: you could be going even higher.

Sunday’s hike was a rerun of one I did back in January, from the Regency gate on Diablo’s north side, starting with a climb to a knob called Mount Olympia at over 2900 feet, then dashing over to North Peak and the Summit, both of which are over 3500 feet, then returning to where we started.

Of the three of these peaks, only one — Olympia — genuinely rewards the effort: a steep, calve-burning climb ends on a gorgeous overlook where the view goes on for miles in every direction. North Peak has a bunch of radio transmission towers - there were even a couple pickup trucks on Sunday — and the Summit has crowds of tourists and Harley riders. Not the strongest incentive for hiking over seven miles with over 4,000 feet of accumulated elevation gain and being only half-done.

Then again, as special guest Rick Deutsch of Hike Halfdome fame said when we finished: “It’s a great workout.” (By the way, if you go hiking with Rick you’ll have to get used the sight of his back side — he’s tall, long-legged and a very fast walker, hills or no hills — hardly anybody can keep up with him.)

OK, enough blather, let’s look at some pictures:

First thing in the morning, from near the Regency gate: the sun hits the hillside at a perfect angle. That’s Vindu on the left and Andrew, a guy who answered Vindu’s Bay Area Linkup invitation to take in “three hills of hell” or words to that effect. People came anyway. Vindu asked me along because I had done this hike before, though any concept of me “leading” the hike was absurd, given that I walk only a bit faster than a banana slug, and that’s going downhill. I had great views of everybody’s back sides all day, except in the parts where they hiked on out of sight.

One of many Diablo peaks on the way up to the top.

Vindu spotted this cool tarantula, which we all promptly set out to annoy as much as humanly possible by sticking cameras in its face. Nothing worse than spider paparazzi.

I also fall behind because scenes like this must be photographed.

Heading up the one flat stretch of the Olympia Trail — it’s over 400 feet of climb in less than a half-mile to the top from here. Some of the steepest hiking in the Bay Area.

Somebody got his face in the way at the Mount Olympia summit.

From Olympia there’s a cool, craggy trail over to North Peak, whose summit culminates at the top of this crazy-steep patch of mountain road. Coming back down is the real treat.

Vindu occasionally writes about telecommunications for the Mercury News business section, so it’s appropriate to see him up here with all the cell phone towers.

Rick kicks back and enjoys his apple.

One of many excellent chunks of rock near North Peak.

The visitors center at the Diablo summit does have some cool interpretive info inside, and you can buy ice cream bars and Cokes.

One last view of North Peak from the trail heading back down the hill.

Most of the gang, at hike’s end. Vindu and Andrew, also out of camera range, were trying to figure out how to make the timed shutter release on Vindu’s camera work. They never did get it figured out.

To get back to my original point, on whether the Three Peaks route (or, if you’re really hardcore, the Four Peaks ) is worth doing: Sure, to cross it off your life list. Also: if a rare snowfall hits on your day off in the winter: go for it. Otherwise: The trails around the Diablo summit are all much nicer than the summit itself; the hike across the mountainside from Olympia to North Peak is excellent, whereas the peak itself makes you want to move on to the next one.

Getting Peak Fever out of your system is probably the surest way to enjoy future Diablo hikes.

I get some of my best ideas in the shower.

Sunday morning I was somewhere between the wash and rinse cycles when I realized I had to go to Mount Diablo, hike up to a knob at about 3,000 feet called Mount Olympia, and if the mood struck, continue on to North Peak and the Diablo Summit.

Seven and a half hours after starting out, I was done. Around 14 or 15 miles, somewhere north of 4,000 feet of elevation gain. On the wrong day this route at Diablo would make hell feel like the Antarctic. But on the right day, it’s one of the most amazing all-day hikes in the Bay Area.

Sunday was one of the right days.

Yeah, the wind coming in off the bay was blowing at gale-force. Sure, the trails were mercilessly steep in places. But it was a cool day with all the Bay Area to soak in from the heights. Tips of the Sierra peaks were visible off to the north. In a word: excellent.

So let’s check out the pictures:

I started out from the Regency Gate in Clayton and headed up Donner Canyon Road till the trail markers pointed me toward Mount Olympia. The first mile and a half are pretty easy; the second mile and a half are brutal. The consolation of climbing such steep terrain is that the panoramic views open up pretty quickly.

Most of the hiking is on the west face of what’s called the Diablo Massif. This means the morning sun’s on the other side of the hill till well into the morning. I caught the sun shining through this tree at a little after 9 a.m.

Here’s a rocky knob about a half-hour from the Olympia summit.

A snag over the trail not far from the Olympia summit. The trail’s mucho steep along here, which provides an excellent excuse to squeeze off a few frames. Once you get to Mount Olympia, Diablo’s North Peak beckons. It’s about another 600 feet of climb, but after the first 2000 are out of the way it seems hardly a challenge at all (fortunately I don’t have to seek my feet’s permission before making such judgments.)

Excellent rock pinnacle along the North Peak trail. Around here the wind is blasting over the top of the peak and roaring through the pines. The trail is rocky and uneven, with traces of snow left over from a few days ago. “Man, this is hiking,” I think.

Self-portrait, along the North Peak Trail. I’d be Popsicle without my trusty windbreaker and hiking hat.

Some shots I cannot resist snapping, or posting.

So when you get to the main road going up to the North Peak summit, you turn left and head up for about a third of a mile. And by up I mean nose-bleed steep. You get to these catwalks but if you have a trace of sanity you will not try to walk on them. Coming back down is even more fun — I figured out you have to avoid all the gravel and step on the hard bits of rock in the road. Still, harrowing. For some reason all the technology up here doesn’t bug me. It’s a kind of reassurance that others are foolish enough to come up here too.

From North Peak you it’s down to Prospector’s Gap to catch the Summit Trail for a mile and a half up to the summit visitors center. The top of the center has an enclosed viewing area for taking in the sights sheltered from wind blast. This bronze plaque is in the center. of the room.

Now for the fun part: all downhill to the parking lot.

Along the Summit Trail heading back to Prospector’s Gap. Nice view, eh? At the Gap I take the Bald Ridge Trail, which has the nerve to throw in some uphill sections along its meandering mile and a third.

Here’s a look at North Peak from the Bald Ridge Trail.

My kinda snags, along the Bald Ridge Trail, which I take to Murchio Gap, where I pick up the Back Creek Trail. From here it’s a few more miles back to the car and I’m done.

An excellent oak tree along the Back Creek Trail.

“Is that the Sierra over there?” I asked.

“Has to be,” Vindu replied.

We were on that great rarity at Mount Diablo State Park - a relatively flat stretch of trail — and had just finished a mildly excruciating climb from 600 to 2400 feet in a little over three miles. Vindu’s friends Kim and Rebecca were 30 paces ahead of us. What we needed more than an expanse of easy trail was an excellent view to soak in while our heart rates returned to normal.

There was a faint, but distinct, thin white line far to the northeast of us. Couldn’t have been clouds: none had come through since Friday. This was the view I had long heard was available to the unaided eye if the conditions were just right. In two and a half years of hiking I had never seen it, till Sunday.

Well more than a hundred miles away as the crow flies. Two hundred miles of driving to get there in person. They are awesome up close, but oddly enough, they’re even more awe-inspiring when only barely discernible across a vast distance.

We had a strong soaking rain in the Bay Area late last week, and some strong winds Friday and Saturday. Then 24 hours of no storm systems moving in off the coast. All this coinciding with a day I happened to hike Diablo made it a rarity indeed. The view in every direction was so devoid of airborne bits of grit and grime that it was like getting new glasses with a stronger prescription. We get good vistas all the time around here, but great ones like this are as rare as snow in these hills.

Of course my cheap digicam wasn’t even remotely up to the task of capturing white strands of snowcapped mountain range on the other side of the state, so you’ll just have to make do with my description.

We started out at the Mitchell Canyon trailhead and took the Little Giant Loop, which is around eight miles with 1800 feet of elevation gain. One of the nicest sections of the loop is the Middle Trail, a tree-covered single-track that zigzags up a steep hillside for about a mile and a half. The switchbacks help a bit, but it’s a butt-kicker. You can add injury to insult by hiking a few more miles to the Diablo Summit via Prospector’s Gap road, but we took an easier route to a place called Deer Flat and back down Mitchell Canyon to the trailhead. We broke for lunch on an awesome rocky knob looking out over the Diablo summit. Again, the Sierra was there, beyond Sacramento and the Central Valley.

If there was any downside to the impossibly blue skies, it was that I didn’t get to capture any swell swirling-cloud action on camera. Had to settle for the leafless-tree-foreground, expansive-vista background that has served me so well in past outings.

Many of these pictures feel like ones I’ve taken before, so feel free to skip over any that seem too familiar.

Good ol’ pine needles against a field of blue.

I may well have photographed this actual branch on a previous visit. Great thing about hiking is it never looks quite the same way twice.

A typical scene from the Middle Trail looking out over the ridge toward Mount Olympia. Rest stops tend to be quite rewarding, vistawise, along this route.

We paused at this grassy glade and soaked up the scenery. Amazes me to see so much green in the middle of January.

Makes you wonder what forces in the earth’s crust could leave such ridges in the landscape, eh?

Vindu soaks in the view a Murchio Gap. There Sierra peaks are the tiny bit of white at the horizon barely visible at this resolution; the mountains are a bit more discernible in the high-resolution version
(this is a huge file, so give it time to download.)

Rebecca ponders the view.

Three examples of Diablo terrain: Rocks, foreground; forest, center; mountain ridge, background.

Kim’s ready to hit the trail again.

Another fabulous dead tree, for effect.

Live, but leafless.

The rocky sides of Mitchell Canyon on the hike back to the trailhead.

Mount Diablo is the biggest thing in the Bay Area. It dominates the landscape from just about every vantage point. That bigness translates into dozens upon dozens of trails; I’ve hiked perhaps a quarter of them.

Something always happens that makes me want to come back.

The snow we got over the weekend was heaviest above 3,000 feet. Since I’m all about the snow outings these days I decided the place to go to see more snow was Mount Diablo, which summits at over 3800 feet. I also wanted to do a real summit hike — starting way down in the lowlands and hiking all the way to to the top. There’s dozens of ways to do it, but only one includes free parking in a neighborhood bordering the park’s northern reaches. Yeah, I drove 25 miles out of my way to save six dollars.

Here’s the hill from the Regency Gate. The summit got foggier as the day went by; I’m guessing warm air moving over cold snow was the culprit (hey, it makes beer bottles sweat, so it must the same effect, right?.

Little bits of snow started showing up about an hour and a half into the hike.

It’s getting foggier — and colder — the higher I go. Diablo always seems to have wacky/way-cool cloud formations blowing by

Two hours into the hike, I’m about two thirds of the way to the summit. My route — Donner Canyon to Middle Trail to Prospector’s Gap to Summit Trail — is between five and six miles with 3,300 feet of climb. Middle Trail to Prospector’s Gap is three miles of up, up, and more up. The mile and a half on Middle Trail is gorgeous single-track, with dense vegetation almost forming a canopy over the trail. The mile and a a half on Prospector’s Gap Road is mean, nasty and all-around brutal, but once you get to the Gap, it’s just another mile and a half on another gorgeous stretch of single-track and the last 800 feet of climb.

This hike is by no means for beginners, but it wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be. Going in winter makes all the difference.

North Peak seems way, way too high at this point. When I was done, though, I had climbed 300 feet higher at Diablo Summit.

Prospector’s Gap. North Peak is up to the left, and the Summit Trail is up to the right.

Snow dominated the landscape on the shady side of the hill as I hiked up Summit Trail. On the sunny side, most of the snow had melted.

The last half-mile, at long last!

One of the prettiest scenes was in the last hundred yards before the summit parking lot.

I love it when signs convey a keen grasp of the obvious.

Mount Diablo is so much bigger than the surrounding hills that you can navigate by it from throughout the East Bay, as long as you can see it. When you get to the trailhead and think about hiking to the top, it seems impossibly tall and distant. But if you’ve got the legs for a 3,000-foot climb and the feet for a 12-mile hike, it’s very doable. Best time to go is in winter, when it’s cool, though some of the trails are pure muck at the lower elevations after it rains. Or, snows, in this case.

Mount Diablo State Park seems aptly named if you visit in summer, when dry, sunny afternoons in the high 90s are a fixture of the environment. It’s another world, however, in winter and spring, when the hills green up and Pacific breezes cool the air as you climb higher up the hills.

I paid a visit to the Diablo summit in early December and had to hike hard to stay warm — a light sheen of ice covered many a puddle up there. I went back again on Sunday to hike the popular Falls Trail Loop, a five-miler that climbs 1,300 feet up into a canyon where cascading creeks create a number of nice little falls. Not spectacular by Bay Area standards, but the trails follow the creeks most of the way so you get a lot of that calming aura of running water pretty much the whole way (the guidebooks don’t mention that walking next to these burbling books will trigger an insatiable desire to pee; consider yourself warned).

Seeing the falls in their full, raging glory requires slogging through gooey, muddy trails after about three days of strong rains. Another option is to give the trails a week to dry out and imagine how much more water would be flowing in the falls while you’re not cleaning all that gunk off your shoes, socks and pantlegs. That was my option on Sunday. Yeah, the falls were underwhelming but the hills were a gorgeous green you get only with direct sunshine.

Near the beginning of the trail. It’s mostly an old dirt road here but the sections near the falls are single-track.

Jonquils growing near the site of Donner Cabin.

Tree growing from a rock face near the Falls Trail.

None of my waterfall shots came out worth a darn, but this little cascade offered some consolation.

Required dead-tree pic.

A ridge in the distance climbs toward the Diablo summit.

Weatherwise this was perfect day; sunshine, mild breezes, high in the low 70s. All of which gives me the perverse desire to do this hike again in the middle of a rainstorm, mud be damned (though I must admit that when it’s man vs. mud, the mud always wins).

If you ever go to Mount Diablo State Park, get yourself a trail map; the hike combinations are mind-boggling. If you go in summer, bring lots of water — you’ll need every drop.