After weeks of dry, sunny weather, the rains returned for a couple of weeks. After a lot of rain on Saturday, Sunday seemed to be clearing, so Darby and I headed to Sunol for a hike. I felt like pushing it a bit more than the past few hikes, so I planned to go follow the road up Alameda Creek, then take the McCorkle Trail up the hill to Cerro Este and down the other side.
The day started off very beautiful with bright sunshine between the shadows of puffy clouds. The hills were brilliant green. There were lots of nice scenes for photos. Just beyond Little Yosemite, some people with a couple of poodles off leash were coming the other way, so Darby and I went off the trail a bit to let them pass. Soon there were more people with poodles. It must have been some kind of poodle club because there were about 10 of them. After making sure all of the poodles had passed, we got back on the trail. Near the park boundary, we turned left up the hillside Backpack Road, and then left on the McCorkle Trail. It was beautiful with the dramatic clouds, but the clouds were becoming thicker to the west. The views along the trail are great. We could see back into the higher hills to the east, and there was a dusting of snow on some of them.
The climb from the creek was starting to wear me down, but the trail kept climbing. Soon raindrops were falling. I thought it was just going to be a little shower. Anyway, by now it would have been longer to backtrack that to keep going. We turned right on the Cerro Este Road, thinking we were almost at the top of the hill. It turned out to be more climbing than I expected, but we made it to the top and it was now it was pouring rain.
We went on down the other side, walking carefully in places in slippery mud. The road winds along the hillside going steadily down, but we could see that it looked like an awfully long way to the bottom. Passing the old barn called the High Valley Camp, there were a bunch of cows in the road, and when one started coming toward us, Darby got scared and barked at it. We made it through the cows, and then it was just another mile of trying to make it down without slipping in the mud. We had been hiking in the hard rain for a good hour at least, and I was pretty much soaked through. Darby wasn't too happy about it either.
7.8 mi. -- 2100 ft. up and down
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