January 15 - North Side of Mt. Diablo - Saturday 4D Meet at Mitchell Canyon trailhead at 8:30 AM, or at the no-host carpool at the Page Mill Road and Highway 280 Park & Ride at 7:00 AM. This is a strenuous hike that will attempt three summits: Eagle Peak, North Peak, and Mt. Olympia. Bring lunch, water, and jacket. Call leader if you have not hiked with the group before. Leader: George Sinclair

Nobody showed up from Palo Alto but we had a fine day without them. An inversion layer trapped cold fog beneath warm sunshine.

Mt. Diablo Day Hike, Sat. January 15

There were seven of us on this hike.  It was a cold, foggy, and damp morning
when we headed up towards Eagle Peak from the Mitchell Canyon trailhead at
8:40 am - we waited ten minutes for any late people.  A few hundred feet below
the top of Eagle Peak we hiked through the fog into a sunnier and somewhat drier
environment.  90 minutes, and almost 1800 vertical feet - starting from the
cars - we reached the top of Eagle Peak.  We enjoyed good views of what the
remainder of the day had in store for us.

From Eagle Peak we dropped down about 300 feet to Murchio Gap before
continuing on up to North Peak.  The vertical gain from Murchio Gap to the summit of
North Peak is at least 1500 feet.  The Bald Ridge Trail, which connects Murchio
Gap and Prospectors Gap (the low point between the Diablo summit and North
Peak) is a narrow and rough trail, that contains many steep downhill sections
followed by very steep uphill sections.  Nevertheless we made good time and
reached the summit of North Peak by noon.

From the top of North Peak we could easily see the Sierra and Snow Mountain.
Some in our group thought they could see Mt. Lassen.  Lower regions were all
obscured in fog.  After a short lunch stop we headed over to Mt. Olympia,
which is about 600 feet lower than North Peak but still involved an uphill of
about 70 feet.  It took us less than an hour to go from North Peak to Mt. Olympia.

After Mt. Olympia we had a long downhill ahead of us.  In places the trail we
were following was quite steep, and at one point we had a good view of the
falls in Wild Oat Canyon.  We followed the Wassermann Trail and the Bruce Lee
Trail and eventually reached Donner Canyon.  The lower we got, the colder it
became.  Oddly, the warmest part of the day was on the top of North Peak.  Unlike
most of the day, we found the trail in Donner Canyon to be very muddy.

We reached the cars a little after 3:30 pm, which was a little sooner than we
had expected.  We had a strong group and moved at a good clip all day so that
may account for it.  Also, we thought that next time we would include the
Diablo summit which would add at least another hour.  In all we did about 4000
feet of climbing in about 13 miles.