Irrelevance Glorified

Well, it’s been a long time in-between hikes. We can blame my laziness as well as the threat of rain, which combined with my laziness can make it hard to motivate myself out of the house. One of the last weekends of March proved to be quite beautiful, so I decided to try out Mission Peak, in East Bay. It has a reputation of being quite a steep hike, but it’s relatively short (~ 5.5. miles out and back) so I had always elected to try other hikes.

This hike is very accessible, which is both good and bad. Good because it’s only a 30 minute drive from my apartment, and there is no segment of the way that is composed of windy, narrow road. Bad because this means that everyone comes with their kids and their strollers and such. I got a somewhat late start, and arrived to find the parking lot full and the residential streets packed all around. I lucked out and found someone leaving, so my walk to the trailhead was only about 5 minutes.

This hike is not fooling anyone. You get to the trailhead, and you see the peak ahead of you, with the path snaking up to the crest. You know exactly what you’re getting into. The path up from the Stanford Avenue trailhead is wide and graveled. I’m not a huge fan of multi-use trails; I like to pretend that I’m trekking through the wilderness, and that illusion is disrupted if I have to watch out for mountain bikes and if I hear the sounds of babies in strollers.

I also was hoping that the view would be clearer, since it had rained a few days before. Alas, the haze returned sooner than I would have expected. Overall, though, it was a good way to break in my otherwise lethargic body (I was sore for a week) and to get myself prepared for the hiking season. While steep, the view was pretty rewarding. I give this hike a B+/A-.

Picture set on Flickr Here
Slideshow Below
Pictures & Descriptions after the jump.

 

This is the view from my parking spot. I was really hoping that recent rains would have knocked down the haze in this spot. There were a ton of people here today. It might be because it was one of the first beautiful weekends of the year so far. Or it could always be like this, since this was my first trip. I had to park a bit farther out, on a residential street.

 

I don’t know what these trees are, but there was a line of impressive trees along Stanford Avenue right before reaching the trailhead.

 

The trail map for Mission Peak

 

This is a view up to Mission Peak, from lower down on the trail.

 

There were quite a few cows grazing along the trail.

 

I was sorta scared that the mother cow would think that I was eyeing her child for a meal.

 

The top of Mission Peak is pretty rocky; its crest looks a lot more aggressive from here than it did earlier.

 

There were a bunch of little chipmunks or ground squirrels or whatever scurrying around. They were cute yet elusive.

 

From the top, you can see the Sunol Wilderness that abuts Mission Peak Preserve

 

Here’s a decent little view of East Bay and Fremont below. You can also see the trail switchbacking below.

 

I was really hoping the haze would be knocked down enough that San Francisco and Oakland would appear, but they’re pretty much blocked out by the haze.

 

This little pole up at the top, along with being copiously vandalized, had a bunch of little tubes that were oriented towards various points of interest. One might say "San Francisco", for instance. A nice little project.

 

It could be my imagination or perhaps altitude induced sickness (a shocking 2400 feet above sea level), but I swear I could see the snow capped crests of the Sierra Nevadas in the distance.

 

The person who took this picture did a pretty horrible job, since I appear to be fat.

 

I’m a big fan of my GorillaPod, and looks for any chance to use it during a hike.

 

That little figure in the distance is a little chipmunk/squirrel thing. He was keeping an eye out for intruders

 

I really wanted to make this is a loop instead of an out-and-back, so I elected to take a different trail back to the trailhead. This path seemed steeper as well as less distinct.

 

 

A couple things of note about this picture. This is the first time I used a technique that is not very original, but seemed like a Eureka moment for me. I jammed my hiking pole into the ground to make a monopod, then used the GorillaPod to mount my camera on top, giving me a much better viewpoint than if I just put it on the ground. Secondly. this bench is freaking huge. This a bench made by Andre the Giant. My feet are not touching the ground at all, and I had to like hop onto it. This is probably about the safe limit of my 10 second timer.

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