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

Round Valley

Miwok Trail near beginning of hike

Earth Day was a good day for taking a hike. I didn't realize that it was Earth Day until I was already driving to Round Valley Regional Preserve for a hike, and I heard it on the radio. I had been interested in checking out this park for a long time, and actually went there to hike with my dog, Darby, a year ago, but discovered at the park entrance that dogs are not allowed. So today I left Darby at home and went by myself. I drove out on 580 to Livermore, and then Vasco Road toward Brentwood, and then Marsh Creek Road to the park. This was probably the easiest way to get there from the Hayward area. On the return drive, I went the other way, through Clayton and Walnut Creek, and it seemed to take a lot longer even though it looks more direct on the map.

I arrived at the parking lot at about 11:30 am, and was surprised to see maybe a couple dozen cars there. Most regional parks are usually almost deserted on weekdays. The Miwok Trail starts out climbing a hillside, but soon levels out and most of this hike was relatively flat. I soon found the reason for all the cars as I passed a large group of hikers going the other way. After that I saw only a few other people on the trail. The trail follows a creek up a canyon for about a mile, and then the hills open up and you are in a broad, flat valley. It is really great that this valley has been preserved because there are very few places in the Bay Area where flat ground has been left undeveloped. There is a lot of park land around, but almost all of it is hills.

On Murphy Meadow Trail

I turned left on the Murphy Meadow Trail and headed across the valley. The hills to the southwest present a fairly dramatic escarpment, rising steeply about 1500 ft. from the valley. The trail skirts along the base of these hills and then rejoins the Miwok Trail. If one were to continue on the Miwok Trail, you would climb to the top of the hills and into Morgan Territory Regional Preserve. Maybe one of these days, I'll try to organize some friends to do a car shuttle and hike this trail link.

On Miwok Trail

On Miwok Trail

I turned left on the Miwok Trail and headed back across the valley. It was a beautiful day, a bit cool and breezy with a few puffy clouds. The meadows and surrounding hills were all brilliant green. I took a lot of photos, trying to capture the beauty of it all, but most of them fall short of my expectations. I noticed lots of ground squirrels all over, and they seemed fairly unconcerned about me walking near them. Then I realized that it is probably because there are no dogs in this park. If Darby had been here with me he would have been having a great time chasing the squirrels back into their holes.

 As I walked back down the canyon, I was getting a bit tired and quite hungry, since I didn't bother to bring anything to eat. When I looked at the GPS on my iphone and saw that I had walked nearly 6 miles, I felt better about being tired. But because this trail is mostly level, it didn't seem as hard as some of the shorter walks with hills that I've done recently.

6.0 miles, 560 ft. climb

Five Canyons

Along the ridge

I do a lot of walking in the Five Canyons area because it's close to home. Today I did a loop that I hadn't done in a while that shows off some of the best trails in the area. One of the reasons that I wanted to do it today was that I was curious about what happened to Eagle's Nest Ranch, the place where we boarded our horses 4 years ago. At that time they kicked us all out and closed the ranch. We've heard various rumors about the place over the years, and the latest was that they had leveled all of the buildings. The Five Canyons trail that I chose to take today has a great view down into Palomares canyon and the site of Eagle's Nest Ranch, so I hoped to see for myself what they had done.

I started off at the Recreation center where there is a swimming pool and tennis courts. The trail almost immediately heads down into a pretty little shady canyon. Then it crosses a road and goes through another little canyon, and then past a small playground (Ridge Trail Park), along a service road, across Five Canyons Parkway near the development entrance with its fake waterfall, and up a hill along the edge of the development. Then it comes to a paved road leading up to some water tanks, a pretty steep climb, and it soon reaches the top of the highest hill in the area.

 There was my view of the former Eagle's Nest, and it was indeed leveled — all except for a couple of small sheds. I don't know why I cared, but we had our horses there for three years and we have a lot of good memories of the place. From there it was all downhill, first along the ridge, and then steeply down into the canyon. Going down the shady canyon along the creek, I ran into a couple of old friends who I hadn't seen in quite a while. They told me that they had seen some newts further down the trail in a pool in the creek. I looked, but didn't see any, but in past years I remember lots of newts along this creek. Even with some pretty good rains in February and March, the creek is mostly dry now.

As I was hiking, I began to think about the name "Five Canyons". There seems to be only two obvious canyons here, the one with the Shady Canyon Trail and the one with the Deer Canyon Trail. Then I realized that there must have been five small canyons here at one time, but three of them were filled in by the grading for the development. This is just another example of developments all over California that are named for the natural environments that were destroyed to build them. I guess it all started just after the gold rush when they cut down a grove of oak trees to build a town and named it Oakland.

3.3 miles, 750 ft. climb

Bishop Ranch

Grey Fox Trail

I'm finally recovered enough from my heart surgery to start doing some hiking again. Actually I've already been doing some 2-3 mile walks for the past several weeks, but on trails that I've already written about here on this blog. Everyone seems surprised that I am doing so well, but it feels to me that after 2-1/2 months, it's about time that I'm back to my old self. I still have to go slow on the hills, but there's no need to hurry and I get there eventually.

Today seemed like a good day for a hike, and at first I thought of going someplace without Darby, maybe Mt. Diablo or Round Valley. But then I started feeling sorry for him being left at home, So I decided to check out Bishop Ranch Regional Open Space, which I hadn't visited in a very long time. On the map it looks like a pretty small park, but on the ground, there seems to be plenty of space for a pretty good workout.

It was a perfect day for hiking. The morning fog had just burned off as we started out a little before noon, making it cool and sunny. We started up the Grey Fox Trail, climbing steeply. In fact it is so steep that someone has carved steps into the dirt of the hillside to make it a little easier. It eases up a bit after the first hill, but continues climbing all the way to the top of a ridge. It was a beautiful walk with green grass everywhere and lots of buttercups and other wildflowers. From the top there are nice views of the higher hills to the south and of the San Ramon valley to the northeast. We turned right on the Red Tail Hawk Trail heading northwest along the top of the ridge.


My plan was to make a loop by going down the Stream View Trail, so I kept looking for a trail sign or a trail heading off to the right. We soon came to an unmarked fire road heading right. It appeared to cut across the hillside to a water tank. It didn't quite match up to what I expected from the map, but we tried it anyway. As we neared the water tank, there was a sign saying "Red Tail Trail", and at the tank, there didn't seem to be any trail heading down towards the creek, so I figured that we had gone too far and missed our turn-off. I didn't mind too much because it was a pretty trail and a gentle slope back up to the ridge.

Stream View Trail

We found the correct turn-off, unmarked and barely visible because it was overgrown with new grass, and we headed steeply down to the creek again, and then along the hillside just above it. After a while, it climbs a bit and then a footpath branches left and heads down nearer the creek and leads back to the starting point. As usual, Darby was thirsty by now and quickly found a little running water to drink. I would guess that in a few weeks more it will be all dry. So it turned out to be a very enjoyable couple of hours, and a place that I will probably come back to again soon.

3.6 miles, 700 ft. climb

No more hiking for a while

Just when I thought my foot pain was behind me and I was ready to start hiking again, something much more serious got in the way.

On Friday morning, January 24, I went to Hayward Kaiser for a treadmill test. I thought that this would be just another routine test, and how hard could it be to walk on a treadmill? Halfway through the test, the doctor suddenly told me to get off the treadmill and sit down. He said that he had seen something abnormal, and they immediately put me in a wheelchair and took me to the emergency room. A short time later, I was in an ambulance hooked up to monitors and IVs and speeding to Kaiser Santa Clara with lights and sirens going. In Santa Clara they did an angiogram, and found that a couple of my coronary arteries were 80% blocked, and that I would need bypass surgery.

After a couple of weeks in the hospital with all kinds of scary stuff happening, they let me go home to recuperate. It has now been three weeks since the surgery, and I'm beginning to feel like my normal self again. Most of the time it doesn't hurt -- only when I cough -- and I can go for short walks and do a lot of stuff as long as it doesn't involve lifting, pushing or pulling anything heavier than 10 lbs. I'm low on energy and take a lot of naps, and I'm not supposed to drive.

So it's going to be a long time until I can get back into any serious hiking, probably at least several months. In the meantime, I'm going to see what I can do about writing a few more stories about some of my memorable trips from long ago.

Backpacking with the Scouts 1956-1961

I'm still taking it easy with the hiking and I don't know how long it will be before my foot feels good enough for long walks. In the meantime, I can still add stuff to this blog. I'm going to ignore the common advice that a blog should stay focused on a single subject, and start adding posts about other stuff. Mostly, I want to share some stories and photos from long ago in places far from the East Bay. I've got a lot to choose from, but I decided to start way back near the very beginning of my interest in hiking and wilderness.

It was June, 1956, and I was 11 years old, when I went on my first backpacking trip. I had joined Boy Scout troop 204 in Lafayette, a troop that took scouting more seriously than most. They were well organized and had a lot of activities going on, including a 10-12 day, 60 mile wilderness trip every summer. It was pretty scary for a shy little kid like me, but I soon made a lot of friends and began to fit in.

The backpacking trip took a lot of preparation. Lots of things were different about backpacking in those days. Our equipment was all very low-tech and inexpensive. We got a lot of it from Army-Navy surplus stores. There were a lot of them around, selling left-over stuff from World War II. My dad helped me build my own wooden pack frame. For tents, each boy carried a "shelter half", a piece of canvas that buttoned together with another one to make a pup tent big enough for two. We had cheap sleeping bags, but no pads or mattresses. To pack up, we would lay out everything on the shelter half, wrap it up and lash it to the pack frame.

Cooking was done on wood fires with #10 tin cans for pots, and a few flat aluminum pans. When we arrived at a campsite, all of the boys spread out to gather wood -- small dead sticks broken from the lower branches of lodgepole pines. Our food was mostly dehydrated -- freeze dried food was not available yet. We didn’t use any kind of water purification; we just drank right out of the lakes and streams. We usually went early in the season — late June or early July, and there was usually plenty of water and lots of snow. Often, there was too much water — streams difficult to cross and meadows flooded. And there were plenty of mosquitos too. Repellent and head nets were standard equipment. Near the midpoint of each trip, we would be resupplied by air drop. A plane would fly over and drop boxes of food with parachutes.

This was way before the days of overflight restrictions, wilderness permits and group size limitations. It was also before anyone thought much about protecting the environment. We picked up our trash and filled in our fire pits, but otherwise didn't think much about our impact on the land. It didn't seem to matter much because there was hardly anyone else there. We would often go for days without meeting other people on the trail.

Anyway, there I was, eleven years old with almost no camping experience, going on my first trip. We met at the scout cabin at about 4 am, and 30 or 40 of us got on a chartered bus and rode to Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite. It was a hot day, and after hiking across the dam, we climbed a dusty trail endlessly switchbacking up the side of the canyon. It was very hard for me, panting hard to get enough air and dying of thirst. Someone told me that holding a small pebble in my mouth would help with the thirst, and it seemed to work at least a bit. I was totally exhausted when I finally reached our campsite in a meadow named Beehive.

Early the next morning, I was startled awake by a very loud explosion. Our scoutmaster liked to wake everyone up with a large firecracker. I was mostly recovered from yesterday’s hiking, but now I was suffering from diarrhea, probably from the change in food, or the water, and I was pretty miserable. I was thinking maybe this was all a big mistake, and there was no way to escape. But after hiking a few miles, we came to Lake Vernon, and the view of the lake and the high granite domes beyond it was really impressive. Day by day, I got stronger and used to the routine, and I noticed more and more what a beautiful place it was.

Ever since I had joined the troop, I had suffered with anxiety about rumors of a tough initiation. It happened around the sixth day at Wilmer Lake. I was blindfolded and led through a lot of ceremonial stuff, and then I was told that I was going to be thrown into the river. Two older boys held my arms and feet and swung me several times, then let me go. I was expecting icy cold water, but some other boys caught me and it was all over.

Each day of hiking we had been gaining elevation, and about the seventh day patches of snow appeared here and there, and when we reached Grace Meadows at about 10,000 ft., there was snow all over. We found some patches of bare ground in the trees, and camped there. It was here that we had the air drop. Our scoutmaster was an airline pilot, and he had connections in the air force, and so the plane that appeared was a World War II era bomber, a B-29, I believe.

We spent a couple of layover days there, and one morning, one of the older boys led a climb up nearby 11,000 ft. Forsyth Peak. I went along, and it was one of the most exciting things I had ever done. It was windy and cloudy, and all around us seemed like an endless expanse of snowy mountains. After that I was thoroughly hooked on climbing to high places. I always thought that some day I would learn how to do some real climbing with ropes and stuff, and never got around to it. But I have enjoyed many years of hiking around in the mountains and scrambling up peaks here and there.

For the following seven summers, I went on similar trips with the troop. All but two of them were crossings of the northern Yosemite area, a beautiful area that doesn't get as much attention as the high country further south. The other two trips followed the John Muir Trail from Devils Postpile to Tuolumne Meadows, another of my favorite areas.

Here are some of the highlights (and low points) of those trips:

On the 1957 trip, my second, there was a boy a year younger than I who was not doing well. He was a spoiled kid who was not very active and somewhat overweight, and was having a hard time keeping up. The other boys teased him mercilessly. On the second day, we faced a 2000 ft. climb over a ridge, and the scoutmaster asked me to hike with him. I was pretty insecure myself, so I was afraid that I would end up a target of their teasing too. But I did it, and without all the jeering from the other boys, this kid managed to get himself up the ridge, and he made it through the rest of the trip. And no one teased me about it either.

Also on that 1957 trip, one of the older boys was leading the troop as we approached Benson Lake where we planned to camp on the beach. It was a wet year, and about a mile before the lake, the trail was under water. We waded on through thigh-deep water, with terrible mosquitos, until we reached the beach, which was under several feet of water. We had to wade back out and ended up camping on a brushy hillside where the mosquitoes weren't quite as bad but still pretty miserable.

In 1959, at a rest stop, our scoutmaster, Ken Clifford, was busy doctoring the blisters of one of the boys. At that point it had pretty much been decided that a career in medicine was in my future, since I was good in science and that's what my family wanted. As Ken was taping up the boy's blister, he said to me something like "If you want to be a doctor, you should pay attention to this". What I should have paid attention to was the fact that I wasn't really interested in another boy's blisters, and years later I realized that I really didn't want to be a doctor, and I dropped out of my third year of medical school at UCSF.

In 1961, I remember a very long, cold night spent next to a fire in thin clothing and no sleeping bag. A group of us were camped at Minaret Lake, and a couple of older boys and I set out to do some exploring. We had climbed to Cecile Lake and were heading down a long talus slope toward Iceberg Lake when one of the boys slipped and badly sprained his ankle. He didn't think he could make it back, so we half carried him down to Shadow Lake. He and I spent a freezing night together while the other boy went for help.

I've always had a good memory for the places where I have been. From a very early age I was obsessed with maps and always knowing where I was. Even though it was more than 50 years ago, I still have quite clear memories of a lot of the special places that we visited on those trips. Many of these places in northern Yosemite I have never been back to, but that's not because I didn't care about seeing them again. It's because they take several days of hiking for the average person to get to, and I usually didn't have the time for a week-long trip. These days I could make the time, but I'm probably not physically up to it anymore. But who knows? Maybe someday.

fooling around, Smedberg Lake, 1957                      me at Pleasant Valley, 1957

cooking dinner, Thousand Island Lake, 1958                                        stream crossing, 1958

Typical large campfire -- Spiller Creek, 1959

At the end of one of the trips -- I'm in 2nd row, far left -- Scoutmaster Ken Clifford at far right

Stuck Under a Horse

Now I know what it feels like to be between a rock and a hard place -- or in my case between a rock and a 1200 lb. horse.

I've been trying to take it easy with the hiking lately because of the pain in my left heel. But riding a horse is not too hard on the feet, so yesterday Maureen and I took our horses out for a short ride in Garin Park. The horses are boarded at Alta Vista Equestrian Center right next to the park, and we ride there pretty regularly. Our horses are both 25-year-old geldings and hardly anything bothers them on the trail. Maureen usually rides Zach, an Appaloosa, and I ride Rio, a quarter horse. Our rides are usually uneventful, and not worth a blog post, but yesterday was different.

Everything was fine for the first half hour or so as we rode out into the park. Then Maureen decided to head off the trail up a short steep hillside that connects with another trail. The horses were working hard, trotting up the hill when suddenly Rio stopped and his legs started to buckle. I turned him sideways so he wouldn't back down the hill, and then he just lay down and rolled over on his downhill side. Several times in the past few years he has started to do something similar, but he always was able to get back up and keep going, so I didn't think of trying to jump off. Besides, it happened so fast I don't know whether I could have anyway. So there I was with my right leg stuck under Rio, and no way I could pull it out. Rio just lay there, not trying to move. My leg hurt quite a bit because a rock was pressing into my calf muscle. I tried to get him to move, but I didn't want him to move too much because I knew I might get hurt much worse if he did a lot of struggling to get up.

Maureen was up the hill from us, and she got off Zach, who was getting freaked out, and soon realized that she couldn't help me unless she let him go. So he ran back and forth a bit and then went under some low hanging trees, which freaked him out even more and he took off out of sight over the hill.

It seemed to me that I was stuck there for about 20 minutes, but it was probably not really that long. Maureen tried to pull on Rio to get him up, and he began flailing his hooves, and she got kicked a few times, but not badly. I got my other foot against Rio's neck and pushed hard, and very slowly my leg moved a couple of inches. Then Maureen thought that maybe the saddle was making it harder for Rio to get up, and we managed to undo the cinch. Finally, Rio moved again and I was able to pull my leg all the way out leaving my boot under him. Then he got to his feet. He was still a bit wobbly, but Maureen was able to lead him back down to the base of the hill. I brought down the saddle and put it back on him so we wouldn't have to carry it, and then we started walking back on the trail.

About half way back to the barn, we saw someone riding a horse and ponying another (leading him without a rider). When they got closer we saw that it was a young woman riding Zach, and it was her horse that she was ponying. She said that she had been heading out for a ride and saw Zach running back and forth by the gate to the barn. We all walked our horses back down the trail. By now Rio was doing fine, and Zach was wet with sweat, but seemed OK too. We had really worried about him hurting himself on his wild run.

We put the horses away and were driving back home thinking that it was all behind us now, when Maureen noticed that her phone was missing. We went back to the barn and looked all over, even back up the trail a ways, but it was getting dark, so we gave up. Back at home, I had heard of an app called "Find my iPhone", so I tried to download it to my phone. It required me to upgrade my system software, which seemed to get hung after loading half way, and I thought that I was going to lose my phone too. Then the TV stopped working. After getting everything working again (except for the app which didn't work), I was so ready for a drink.

The next morning, we went back to the barn and walked out to the site of the incident, and there was the phone lying in the grass. But it didn't work, and after charging all day it still doesn't work. And I ended up doing way more walking than I probably should have on my sore foot, but besides my foot, I have aches and pains just about all over now. But I shouldn't complain. I feel very lucky that we got through it with no serious injuries to either people or horses.