After aborting my New Years Yosemite backpacking trip after a single night, I had trouble motivating myself to do any day hikes in January. I at least got a decent amount of bike rides (including a couple of my big 20 mile Lamorinda Loop rides).

Since I wasn’t in Yosemite after the New Year began, that was just a goodbye to 2021 hike.

The weekend after that, I tried to do a straight forward Mt Diablo hike up the Summit trail to begin my 2022 hikes. It was still pretty muddy from the December rains, but somewhere after the Live Oak Campground I started loosing my motivation to do the hike. I made it about 3 miles (half of the distance to the summit) and turned back. I even took a couple alternate routes to skip some of the muddier sections on the my way back to my Jeep. Ironically, the upper part of the mountain usually wasn’t as muddy as the lower part. I don’t think it was the mud, I just didn’t have a lot of motivation.

Although I tried again for the next two weekends, it wasn’t until the second to last day of January that I got the motivation to try again. Talk about procrastinating until the last minute.

So, it wasn’t a new hike, but I started at the bottom of the Summit Trail once again.

It was a little foggy to start, but the skies cleared up pretty fast as I made my way up the mountain.

I intentionally didn’t stop for a break at Live Oak Campground in order to limit the chance my mind would decide to quit again. I decided not to take the shortcut up Staircase Trail and did the full Summit Trail loop that added about a half mile to my hike. Not sure why. The first time I tried to climb Mt Diablo this year, I had decided to use that route since Staircase trail was one of the hardest trails in Mt Diablo State Park to hike when it was muddy. Maybe I just wanted to finish what I started three weeks earlier.

I made it past my previous turn around spot and kept going. It wasn’t until I reached the 4 mile mark that I took a long break at the Junction picnic area. This was two-thirds of the way to the top mileage-wise, but only half of the 3,200 feet I had to climb to reach the summit. Which means the last 2 miles were steeper than the previous 4 miles.

Nothing new to me, but at least I needed to take a good break before continuing. I was unlikely to abort at that point, even if I had some time to think about it.

Fortunately, that turned out to be the case. It wasn’t the fastest time to the top, but I did make it to the summit and took in the clear view. I’ve done this hike so many times, that I’m not sure why I bother taking pictures anymore. They are all so similar looking, but it always seems a shame not to get any pictures.

After a snack and a cold Diet Coke from the visitor center, I started down the mountain. Easier than going up, but after 6.5 miles climbing 3,200 feet, I wasn’t going to be sprinting down the mountain. I’ve never started from the summit with fresh legs, so really have no idea how fast I could do the downward hike without the effort of climbing up the mountain first.

Regardless, it was slow going, but I made my way down with only a short break at the Junction picnic area. Still was almost 8 hours to do the full 13 mile climb and descent. I’m definitely getting slower in my old age.

But I can at last say I welcomed 2022 with a decent hike. Hopefully my motivation starts coming back as I move into February.