After the Ramage Peak Trail hike, the next weekend ended up just as a long bike ride. Long being the third time I did the Lamorinda Loop Trial. I did it clockwise again, since the counter-clockwise I had done two weeks earlier was a killer.

The next weekend, I found another new area to attack. My focus turned to De La Veaga Trail that climbed up from Orinda to the ridge line that separated the Contra Costa area from the Oakland East Bay. There I could do a few different routes from there, but focused on doing the Skyline Trial south to Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park.

One problem was the trailhead in Orinda had a four hour parking limit, most likely to avoid people parking there for the whole day when they took BART from the nearby station. I could hope they wouldn’t enforce it on the weekends, but then I decided I could start from the south end and end in Orinda.

That direction had the benefit of having less elevation to climb. So, I headed to the Skyline Gate Staging Area at the northern end of Redwoods park (where I had started the year with a big loop hike). My time in that park was short lived as I followed Skyline Trail northward.

The trail stuck mostly near the top of the ridge line, but with only the occasional views of the eastern hills and valleys. I was a little surprised as the lack of views to the west and the Bay.

I image that had to do with all the houses built along the Oakland Hills to make sure every house had a great view. That tended to limit where they could run a trail on the west side of the ridge.

But I enjoyed the hike and the views along the way.

As I crossed over the Caldecott Tunnel (way over since it was buried over a lot of the hillside), I was a little amazed at how little you could see of the freeway or traffic whizzing by. You could hear it, of course.

On the hike over I had half-decided to just continue along the ridge and do a long mostly horizontal hike for the day. I could go all the way to Inspiration Point or even down to Wildcat Canyon.

After taking a nice break for lunch near Barberry Peak, I got my first look at the De La Veaga trail running along and up over the ridge line descending from Eureka Peak. It was a a quite picturesque view with Mt Diablo in the distance only adding more to the already great view.

That ended any thought of skipping that trail for the day. Although there was a small climb along this side of the ridge, the rest was downhill, so I decided to stick with the original plan.

As I left the Skyline Trail and started down the De La Veaga Trail, I kind of regretted my decision. The trail turned into a muddy slippery slope. The rain we had the day before hadn’t caused any particularly muddy areas until then, but this part of the trail was different. It took me a lot of careful footsteps to get down the slope without slipping, but I did without any mud on my backside.

Then it was a slow climb to the top of the ridge with some nice views along the way. I did see my first California Poppies of the year (2 whole flowers!), which is sort of the first sign of spring around here. At the top and coming down, I had some more great views of Orinda and MT Diablo.

A very pleasant end to the day and it made me glad I had stuck to the plan and come down this beautiful trail.

It wasn’t a long hike at only 9 miles and 5 hours, but still a good days hike.

I did cheat and took a Lyft back to my Jeep at the starting point, but it was a small price to pay for a nice day out in the woods.