After doing a short hike after my big Angel Island trek, I hoped to do a long hike at Mt Diablo State Park. Maybe Mt Olympia and North Peak.

But my body couldn’t convince me or itself to get going Saturday morning. Sadly, I couldn’t even get the energy or motivation to do a bike ride that day either.

Sunday morning, I tried to get dressed in my hiking gear, have breakfast, and get out the door before I could grow roots into the couch. It worked, but not where I thought I would go.

I didn’t feel like a long slog up the side of Mt Diablo or Mt Olympia, so decided to do a closer hike around Briones Reservoir. While it wouldn’t be anywhere near the elevation climb, the 13.5 miles to do the entire loop was nothing to sneeze at. I always had the option to do a shorter hike by backtracking.

I decided to go counter-clockwise since I did it clockwise the last time I did this hike last September. Clockwise allows you to get the 400 foot climb up to Oursan Ridge done early in the morning. The only problem was the last part of that hike would take me down Bear Creek Trail, which had a bunch of annoying ups and downs.

So after starting from the Briones Overlook Staging Area, I had to start with those ups and downs first this time. 🙂

After reaching Bear Creek Staging area after 4 miles, then I turned and headed along the north side of the reservoir. This part didn’t have as many ups and downs, but it did have a lot of back and forth to trace a group of small coves and peninsulas. After taking a long lunch break, I headed towards the climb up to Oursan Ridge. It wasn’t steep, but somehow doing 400 feet in one stretch seemed bad.

After popping up a side trail to get a great view of the area from the top of Oursan Ridge, I may have taken a wrong turn or lost the trail in the grass. I tried to follow some possible routes and just before I was going to turn around and retrace my steps, I saw a trail going down along a barbed wire fence. Sort of.

It was a bit intermittent, so maybe it wasn’t a good choice after all. It did get me back to the main trail, but maybe I won’t try this trail again next time.

Then it was time to start descending towards the dam, the low point of the trail. A few ups during this part, but it was most downhill so was a nice end to the day. But I did realize one benefit of going clockwise: This part was almost entirely in direct sunlight, so on a sunny day like this was it was a bit warm. Fortunately, it wasn’t that worm of a day, so I survived. 🙂

Regardless, I finished by hiking over the flat dam and reached my Jeep. A good days hike.

After being unable to motivate myself to climb Mt Olympia and North Peak the prior weekend, I set my alarm for 5am Saturday and… turned it off and went back to sleep. 🙁

Not a good start to the weekend.

I did manage to get a 6 mile bike ride in later that day, but I was determined to do at least Olympia. I could just get up at my normal time (and maybe that would have allowed me to actually do the hike the previous day), but one nice thing about climbing Mt Olympia from the East was you could see the Sunrise as you climbed the steep trail of the east ridge. You did have to get an early start to get far enough up the side of the mountain to see the Sunrise. So, I changed my alarm to 4:30am, went to bed early, and actually got up when it went off. 🙂

A quick breakfast later, I got in my Jeep and headed to Marsh Creek Road on the far side of Mt Diablo. Being before dawn, I used my headlamp to start the hike along the Mt Olympia Trail. The Sun was still well below the mountains when I reached the first good view from the trail, so Ikept going and then pasted the second spot. I reached the third spot just in time and enjoyed a break as the sun rose and lit up the scattered clouds. A pretty good Sunrise.

Some day I have to try to see the Sunrise from the top of Mt Olympia, but that would be a very early start since it takes 2.5 hours to get to the the top.

After enjoying the Sunrise, I continued climbing. The Olympia Trail was a fairly easy climb, but once it hit the East Ridge Trail, it became very steep. Not for the first time, I questioned my sanity of doing these hikes. 🙂

I reached the summit of Mt Olympia and took my usually set of pictures (but I have dozens of similar pictures since I have done these hikes in Mt Diablo State Parks dozens and dozens of times).

Normally, I’d take a break on the summit and have a Diet Coke and a snack (donuts in this case), but one reason I had wanted to do this Saturday was that there were high winds forecast for Sunday. And being on top of a mountain or on a mountain ridge, the wind tends to do it’s best to knock you off the mountain. And this was a very COLD wind that morning. So, I came down from the top and found a nice sheltered spot to take a break in.

From there, I could just return to my Jeep, but I still felt good, so continued over to North Peak. Except for the last 100 feet steep climb to the summit of North Peak, the hike over from Mt Olympia was a no brainier so I just had to forget that last bit when deciding to climb North Peak. 🙂

After enjoying a quick time at the top of the summit (there is a tower of microwave antennas at the top of North Peak, so you didn’t want to spend too much time at the very top), I found a sheltered spot on the East side of the summit area and took another break. I could go over to the main summit and make this a “3 Peaks of Mt Diablo” hike, but didn’t feel like taking the 2 hours that detour would take.

So, as I’ve wanted to do for a while now, I descended down the East side of North Peak. This wasn’t an official trail, but was well used and marked as ‘Diabloical Trail’ on my map. It was a good name. It was a steep and sometimes tricky trail to find your way along. I usually avoid unofficial trails, but this one is heavily used and my using it wouldn’t cause any additional wear and tear.

After descending to a very large rock outcropping, I followed the route I had taken the other two times I have that was shown on the map. I started to wonder about that since the route had very little signs of being recently used. And I had passed 3-4 people on the way down.

I knew this route was tricky and steep, but since I had hiked it before I kept going down as it traced the side of the rock outcropping. Slow, but I made it down to where it joined a well used trail. I hiked a bit up that trail and saw where it ran along the other side of the rock outcropping, maybe even requiring a little clambering up the side of the outcropping. Maybe next time.

That section behind me, I continued downward, being extra careful on the steepest sections. It was these sections that made me realize why they didn’t make this an official trail: It was very tricky to navigate the steep sections that didn’t leave much room for errors. There were no switchbacks until the very bottom, so a lot of the trail is straight down the ridge line. Add a lot of loose dirt and gravel and you could very well fall and slide down (if you’re very unlucky, you could also fall face first into the gravel).

I reached the bottom and finished the descent along a utility access road. From there, it was a 2 mile hike to get back to my Jeep, but thankfully over mostly flat terrain.

8 miles in about 6 hours. A nice (but cold) day.