After Colorado I spent 4 days recuperating before I finally took a short 7 mile bike ride on Labor Day morning. That was followed by a longer 13 mile bike ride to Orinda and back two days later.

The following Saturday I got serious and did the big 20 mile Lamorinda Loop Trail on my bike. So, I was able to prove to myself that I wasn’t permanently exhausted and my right knee was fine.

Somehow, I got the motivation to follow that up with a hike. I looked at my options and settled on a not-too-long and not-to-short hike.

I’d hike the Lafayette Reservoir Rim Loop. I’d done it a couple times before, but always by driving to the Lafayette Reservoir dam to start the hike.

Now that I lived in Moraga, I had another choice: I could walk to the Rheem water tank to start the loop. It was 1.5 miles from my home to the water tank along Rheem Blvd. Unfortunately, that was about 300 feet to climb, with the final quarter mile being very steep.

Double unfortunately, the Rim Trail had a lot of ups and downs, including descending from a high point of 1,000 feet down to about 475 at the dam. I had second thoughts a lot that day. 🙂

As I made my way around the loopclockwise, I took in the views and resisted the urge to call for an Uber. 🙂

After taking a long break at the dam to have a Diet Coke and a snack, I continued clockwise around the rim. This half of the trail was a bit easier, but that didn’t stop me from being tempted to take a shortcut to Moraga Rd that would cut 1.5 miles off my return hike and save me about 350 feet less to re-climb.

I pushed aside that temptation and finished the loop with a nice view from the trail’s high point and then returned home and watched some football. 9 miles in 4.5 hours. A good beginning to my post-Colorado hiking.

The following weekend, I did a short hike along the East Ridge Trail in Redwoods Regional Park. A nice, but simple, 4 mile hike from the south end of the park to the north end along the east ridge and back again to make 8 miles total. I didn’t feel like going over to the west ridge and doing a loop of the park (10.5 miles total).

After deciding NOT to do the loop around Briones Reservoir for the past two weekends, I finally got the energy and motivation to do it.

It’s almost 14 miles to do the entire loop and I felt pretty exhausted after doing it for the first time in January of this year. Hence my reluctance to do it again. But it’s a nice hike and I knew I had to start getting longer hikes in each weekend if I was going to stay in hiking shape.

This time, I decided to do it clockwise instead of counter clockwise. That would put the higher climb to Oursan Ridge near the beginning and the smaller climb near the end.

It started out easily enough from the Overlook Staging Area since the first part was mostly level over the top of the dam and the climb up to highest point in the loop (Oursan Ridge) wasn’t steep. The trail along the north side of the reservoir was long as it traced the edge of the reservoir with several long coves extending the hiking time and distance. Some smaller climbs and descents along the way, but nothing particularly high or steep.

Once I reached the Bear Creek Staging Area, I started to think this might be the harder direction. While the last 3.5 miles wasn’t as high as Oursan Ridge (it was maybe 200 feet lower at it’s high point), it did have a good deal of ups and down along the way back to my starting point.

Going back along Bear Creek Road was an option that would save a little bit of distance, but wouldn’t save me climbing up to around 850 feet before descending to the staging area.

Despite my tired body protesting along the way and taking several longish breaks, I finished the loop and celebrated with pizza for dinner.

The clockwise direction may have been harder after all. While the higher ridge was taken care of with fresh legs, having to do all those climbs and descents at the end with tired legs made it seem harder than finishing with the gentle descent to and over the dam at the end.

I’ll have to wait and see what direction I do it the next time.