A few weekends ago, we went camping at Mission Peak, in the East Bay here near San Francisco. We drove in to the Sunol Visitor’s Center and then hiked from there to the Eagle Springs camp ground, which is just off from Mission Peak. The hike was pretty tame, and a lot of the way it was on quite well-made fire roads and unpaved private roads. Personally I prefer to hike (and camp) in more densely wooded areas, but I guess this was an interesting change of scenery.
Getting prep'd
A large portion of the hike was actually through Water Collection land, and then some of it is through Wilderness, which was a bit strange because it was cattle-grazing land, so there were cows everywhere. They didn’t really bother us though, so no big deal.The other weird thing was the squirrels. So many of them. I’ve never seen so many squirrels in my life.
Here’s the trail that we hiked, as tracked by an iPhone app called MotionX GPS. The total hike was around 4.5 miles, and then we hiked probably another 2 miles around in the area on the first afternoon and the second morning before heading back.
Highlights of the trip (for me at least) were spotting (and eating) some Miner’s Lettuce (after our forageSF dinner!), spotting a coyote, who turned out to be tracking a deer, and the absolutely crazy mist that rolled in over night:
Without a doubt the “low point” of the trip was the fact that it rained all night, and that made me paranoid that water was going to get into the tent, so I slept really poorly. It was also really really cold, but hopefully my sweet new Marmot Pinnacle sleeping bag will help mitigate that on my next trip. I also learned that dehydrated Stir Fry Beef and Broccoli from BackPacker’s Pantry is disgusting — mine tasted like gasoline.
The view from Mission Peak really is quite stunning, so here are a few pics to help you feel like you were there:
More photos available on Flickr as soon as they’ve finished uploading, oh, and here’s a random video, panning over some of our food, my knife, camp stove etc, then up to the view from our camp spot, tucked up under a big tree on a hill:
Wow, you have all the gear to hike like that. Makes me seem puny in comparison. Loved the view and I wonder after sitting on the PC all this time typing, if I could even walk 4.5 miles to save my life.
I go kinda overboard on the gear, just because it's fun – it's a whole new category of gadgets! I would definitely encourage you to get out there and enjoy nature. At this rate it might not be an option for too much longer :-/