Briones 5-26-14

Starting up Pereira Trail

It's Memorial Day, and Maureen is going for her weekly horseback riding lesson. She suggests that I could go along and do some hiking while she rides. Her teacher, Jessica, recently moved to a ranch on Bear Creek Road near Briones Regional Park. Sounds like a good idea to me, but since her lesson lasts an hour, it would have to be a relatively short hike. Looking at the map, I noticed that the park has expanded west a bit sometime in the last 30 years and there are some trails I haven't been on yet.

I start off by finding a gate about a half mile north of the Bear Creek Entrance and park on the road shoulder. The gate is locked and there are no signs indicating that this is a legitimate entrance to the park, but I climb over the gate anyway and start up the Deer Creek Trail. The hills have just turned from green to golden in the last week or two, so there are still a few nice green patches. It is an easy walk up this little canyon, and soon I come to a trail junction. I turn left on the Pereira Trail. A right turn would have been on the Briones Crest Trail which circles the whole park. I'm soon on a ridge heading south again. I come to a trail branching right to the Ivan Dickson Memorial. I follow it to the next little hilltop where I can see that it goes down the hill a bit to some kind of stone monument. Since I have no idea who Ivan Dickson was, I didn't bother going all the way down to it. When I got home, I looked it up and found that he was a member of the Berkeley Hiking Club who cared a lot about parks and trails, and left the park district funds to establish a volunteer trail maintenance program, which has continued since his death in 1993. Sounds interesting, and maybe I'll check it out. I continued down the ridge to complete my loop, and almost to the road walked around a little pond with lots of bullfrogs jumping into the water ahead of me.

It was a nice little hike, although I would have liked to go further, but I didn't want to keep Maureen waiting.

2.0 miles, 500 ft. climb

Knobcone Point Loop

Rocks above connector trail

Clear and cool, it was a perfect day for a hike. I thought I would revisit the area around Knobcone Point on Mt. Diablo (Knob Point on USGS topo). A little more than a year ago, I hiked out on the Knobcone Point Trail hoping to make a loop with the Blackhawk Ridge Trail, but couldn't find a way through about a half mile of dense chaparral that separates the trails along the eastern border of the state park. I had made this loop many years ago by bushwhacking through on game trails, and it wasn't too difficult because the area had been burned several years before that, and the brush had not regrown too much. When I went back last year, the brush was so thick I didn't even think of trying to get through it. Then after that hike, I looked around online and found information about a connector trail in a slightly different location that was supposed to be pretty good, so ever since then I have been wanting to check it out.

At the South Gate, I was surprised to find a real person there to take my $10 on a Tuesday morning. The last couple of times, the gate had been unmanned. I started off from Curry Point a little before 11 am. The cool air with a slight breeze made it feel great to be out hiking, so it was a nice walk out to the end of the Knobcone Point Trail along grassy ridges, oak and pine woodlands, and rocky chaparral. As I turned right onto a spur road that leads to a power line tower, I saw a bicyclist head that way just ahead of me. After a short, steep descent, the road bends east and begins to climb again.

Paintbrush

The connector trail that I was looking for begins just at the bottom of the dip. A footpath leads uphill to the right, really no more than a use trail, and it would be easy to miss, but once you start on it, it is not at all hard to follow. It winds in trees and brush through a gap in the sandstone spine of the ridge, with interesting rocks above on all sides. I didn't see the bicyclist again, so they must have followed this trail, and I could see bike tracks in the dust. It seemed like a pretty rough trail for a bike, but they must have made it OK. After descending a little creeklet, it soon emerges on another utility road. It may be a bit harder to find this trail going in the other direction, but it is just before the road goes steeply downhill and ends about 100 yards further. This little connector trail was the best part of the hike, but it is less than a half mile and it ended all too soon.

Southern end of connector trail

on Blackhawk Ridge Trail

But the hike continued on through beautiful country, only on dirt roads rather than footpaths, so it was still very enjoyable. The utility road comes to a 5-way junction, where I turned right on the Blackhawk Ridge Trail, and descended into the canyon named Devil's Slide on the map. In the oak woodland of this canyon there were whole hillsides solid with poison oak. This seems to be an especially good year for the stuff, and not such a good time for off-trail exploring. At the bottom of the canyon, the hard part began. It is quite a climb up out of the canyon, and I was getting quite tired. I began to feel like maybe this was a bit too much for my heart, only three months after bypass surgery, so I stopped a bunch of times on the way up to catch my breath. I had hiked this trail several times many years ago, and I don't remember it being very hard then, but I guess the years have taken their toll. Back at my car, I felt fine after a few minutes rest, and overall, this was a very good day.

5.6 miles, 1200 ft. climb