So I’m on my way to Murietta Falls, trudging up a section of the Ohlone Wilderness Trail popularly known as The Big Burn; possibly so titled because of a fiery regeneration of the plant life years ago, but certainly because…
Alameda County parks
Back in the wilderness
by tmangan • December 17, 2005 • 1 Comment
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…
The Official Fall Colors Hike
by tmangan • November 13, 2005 • 2 Comments
One of the excellent rewards of hiking every weekend is seeing the seasons change. Most of the trees in the Bay Area are evergreens so we don’t get New England-style, knock-your-socks-off autumn colors, though we do get a few splashes…
Another Sunday at Sunol
by tmangan • October 23, 2005 • 0 Comments
Last year I had hiked in the rain a half-dozen times by this late in October, but it’s nothing but sunshine around here this fall. The last time I hiked through the Sunol Wilderness, my camera died on me, so…
Getting sweaty at Sunol
by tmangan • August 22, 2005 • 7 Comments
A year ago last weekend I visited the Sunol Wilderness Regional Park for the first time. Since then I’ve been back to the park at least a half-dozen times. Sunol has just about everything you’d want in a park —…
Sunol after the rain
by tmangan • April 10, 2005 • 0 Comments
Saturday dawned gray and bleak, a gloomy reminder of the storm that drenched the Bay Area on Friday (and hailed all over Melissa’s freshly planted garden. She’s still a little miffed). Within a couple hours, though, the skies were back…
Sun and Sunol
by tmangan • February 27, 2005 • 0 Comments
Another Sunol Wilderness hike; I was going to go here last week with Mike & Kathy, but that one got rescheduled to yesterday. Same hike, same club, different day. I can’t get over how great this park is. Small crowds,…
Off to Murietta Falls
by tmangan • February 21, 2005 • 3 Comments
I’m sore, tired and reeking with self-regard, having finished one of the most brutal hikes in the Bay Area today. It’s six and a quarter miles into the heights of the Ohlone Wilderness to a weak excuse for a creek…
Mud, fog, hills: A day in the Sunol Wilderness
by tmangan • December 13, 2004 • 0 Comments
OK, I admit the side trip through the creek was a bad idea. I was just about done with a 12-mile trek through previously unhiked (by me) sections of Sunol Wilderness Regional Park. The day had two distinguishing features: fog…