To start off February, I started to do a routine hike up the Mt Diablo Summit Trail to the main summit.

But on the way down, I decided to start on one of my New Years’ goals: Finish hiking on every trail at Mt Diablo State Park.

I’ve hiked in the park dozens and dozens of times. Sometimes to the summits, sometimes shorter hikes, sometimes longer hikes that allowed me to see new parts of this large and beautiful park.

So when I actually mapped out what trails I’ve hiked on and what trails I haven’t, I was a little amazed at how many trails I’ve never been on before. A lot of them were little connector trails or trails that dead ended at private property (or just had no particular thing to warrant taking a side trip to see).

I didn’t expect to be able to hike EVERY trail inside the park in this ONE year, but I’d like to get the remaining trails covered so I can get a T-Shirt saying I hiked them all. 🙂

This time, I decided to do a section of Juniper trail that I somehow never hiked: A part leading from below Juniper Campground over to the Summit Trail. It was a very pleasant hike with some great views, so I was amazed that I never managed to do this part of the trail.

I also grabbed a few short bits of trail on the way back to my Jeep along the lower part of the Summit Trail.

Variety is the spice of life, so maybe this resolution will help keep Mt Diablo fresh and new for me. It’s my training mountain, so I might as well use my time there to do some new trails.

After doing the Double Dipsea the previous weekend, I decided to do another hike at Mt Diablo. Mt Olympia was the primary goal, but I always had the choice to do other peaks or trails along the way.

To try to do some trials I’d never been on before, I started from Regency Gate and went up Clayton Oak Road. I actually had a few nice views of the rising sun from that hilly area, so bonus points!

Then I had to do some short dead end trails before reaching Mt Olympia Trail. Those dead end trails are probably at least half of the trials I identified that I had never hiked at Mt Diablo.

After taking in a part of the Olympia Trail that I had never been on (it basically connects to the East Ridge Trail, so I usually went up that trail or the Mount Olympia Road on the west side), I stepped onto Mt Olympia’s summit.

After taking a lunch break at the top, I decided to go down to Donner Canyon and hit a few more connector trails I had never taken before.

So it was a good start to my goal to finish hiking the remaining trails at Mt Diablo this year, but there were still a lot more to conquer.

With a bonus day in February this year, I was going to do a hike at Mt Diablo. As usual, I did a quick search for any events happening that weekend just to avoid having to contend with crowds or being turned around at some point. My search found a guided hike was happening at Magee Preserve. Normally closed to the public, they were allowing people to hike through it as part of a campaign for a ballot measure to permanently preserve 93% of the area for open space.

Having passed that open space many times on my way to the South Gate of Mt Diablo and wishing I could hike along it’s ridges, I couldn’t pass up a chance to see it up close.

So I showed up at the scheduled time and made my way through the area with about a hundred other people. After a moderate climb up a pleasant valley, we arrived at what they called the best view in Danville. I couldn’t really disagree with that, although there’s a lot of nice views in that area.

So while it was only be a couple hours and about 3 miles, it was a nice hike and a chance to see an area not usually open to the public. Hopefully it will be in the near future.