plant dreaming deeply

after ten beautiful, clear and crisp fall days, a group of us hikers headed to the east bay to catch a view from atop mt. diablo. boasting the farthest and most expansive view from almost any peak in the world–"hey, yeah, lets check that view out"–we saw no further than the haze painted hillsides would let us.  a misty white envelope–haze, smog, fog, whatever–blanketed 360 degrees of surrounding scenery. beautiful nontheless. the sun, however, beamed down brightly upon us–trudging uphill-all 3,400 feet uphill. 

we began our ascent from the north entrance staging area at the mitchel canyon trailhead. following mitchell canyon road we wound our way up (switchback, switchback, switchback) to deer flat (more switch backs) and from deer flat rd. we made a last trudge (switchy, switchy) to the summit* above juniper campground.

a quick lunch and then turned around and came back the same way–we made it back to the cars with no light to spare.  14 miles and i was the only complainer. everyone kicked my slow ass on the trail. no surprise there. kurt–damn it, i remember when…

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 24th, 2005 at 4:32 am and is filed under Travel, california, people i met along the way, roadless. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.