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In Which I Hike 21 Miles
Sep. 23rd, 2018 10:20 amI'm now getting up at 6am, which will be 9am Toronto time. Still, not early enough, but within striking distance. I'll get up at 5am on Tuesday, and have a pretty leisurely meander out to my 10am flight, then I'll have to immediately jump back one more hour, to 4am or so (California time), as the Rebooting the Web of Trust seminar will be starting at 8am each day (Toronto time). Sounds doable.
One of the joys of getting up so early is that I get to see Berkeley in an early morning light that I never see, and if it's a Saturday when I have time to go out, and I can have a really full day. So yesterday I was up at 6am, while it was still dark out. By the time I left the house at 6.30, it was gray, though the sun hadn't risen yet.
My general goal was Redwood Regional Park, which is a fair ways away from our house. Rather than going up through Strawberry Canyon into the hills immediately behind our house (which swings me a fair ways north before I head back south), I decided instead to make the ascension up through the canyon containing the Caldecott Tunnel (whose name I still do not know), under the theory that it would get me there quicker.
I was playing it by ear as I headed toward the hills, but I eventually decided to head for the Claremont Hotel, as I vaguely recalled a trail from the employee's parking lot that led up to the Claremont Hills. Sure enough! That's the Evergreen Path. From there, I wandered quiet streets fronted by beautiful, multi-million-dollar homes, most of which were also gated to truly keep the undesirables out. As I walked southward on the hill, I came to a steep, worn stone stairway going up, and after a bit of walking in more rarified airs, I found another steep but better upkept stairway going down. They're both marked but unnamed on Google Maps. I'd never walked either before.
It had been surprisingly foggy throughout the walk, especially in the Hills, and that only increased as I walked up past the Highlands Country Club. (If you are picturing a snooty, overprivileged area, that's the Claremont Hills, and really most of the hills in Berkeley and Oakland.) I eventually got up to Spy Glass Hill, a road that's marked as private (privileged, as I said), but whose only posted restriction is against parking, so I gamely walked across it. On the other side, I was on Hiller Drive, which leads down to the Gateway Exhibit Emergency Preparedness Center (a raised wooden platform with nice views remembering the Berkeley Hills Fire, which back in 1991 actually destroyed most of the area I'd just walked through). From there it was across 24, and into my first of many parks of the day.
The North Oakland Regional Sports Center lies at the bottom of a largely undeveloped area of park (also destroyed in the 1991 firestorm). I hit it at 8am. While walking down Hiller Drive, I could barely see 10 feet ahead of me, an amount of fog that I love but rarely see around our house. But it very abruptly cleared as I hit the Sports Center. It'd been sunny and warm within 10 or 15 minutes, a shocking change.
The "Sports Center" area is largely open with light tree cover; it takes you pretty quickly up a few hundred feet. Although not super attractive, it's a shortcut that keeps you off of Tunnel Road. At the top (which I'd bet is going to get blocked off someday, because it's so semi-official, and there was indeed some threatening construction near the top), I re-merged with Skyline Boulevard and walked that a mile to Sibley, the next park. It's a pity there's no direct connector from the Sports area to Sibley, as there's a lot of open space up there, but that's pretty typical for Oakland's attention to its parks. Once I hit Sibley, though, it was parks for miles and miles, everything connecting until I left Dimond, many hours later.
Oh, and I rediscovered the fog while walking Skyline. It was all clearly visible below me, carpeting the entirety of the East Bay and the bay itself. Mount Tam was visible, more an island than ever, and maybe a few peaks in San Francisco, but for the most part the wide sweep of land and water now visible below me was invisible beneath the fog.
Anywho, Sibley, which I hit at 9am. I didn't take the most attractive route through that park, instead going along the main paved path until I got to the side-path that heads south. That took me into Huckleberry, which is a gorgeous and unique reserve, full of tight paths and ferns. It's largely set in a valley, so when you go from Sibley to Huckleberry, you drop down into that valley and then go back up, which is gorgeous both ways.
There's a connector trail from Sibley to Redwood Regional Park, with a bench right there at a crossroads. Almost four hours after I'd set out, I sat down there and had a few pieces of chocolate to tide me over, as I have before.
I got into the northeast corner of Redwood Regional Park about 10.30am. That was my next big decision point. I have long dreamed of walking to Castro Valley and Google told me it was 12 miles and about four and a half hours to the Castro Valley BART. I seriously considered it, but ultimately decided that I didn't want to strain myself that much three days before a big trip. There was also the option of catching a bus at the Chabot Space & Science Center down to Fruitvale BART, which is what I'd done before when I took a longer route up to Redwood Regional. But ultimately I decided that I could walk longer than that, that I wanted to cut down, down, down the hill and see where it took me. That led me to decide not to dawdle too long in Redwood Regional, which is too bad because it's a beautiful park. But I just hiked around the West Ridge Trail.
I could have avoided Roberts entirely, but there's a beautiful open area there called the Redwood Bowl, and I wanted to stop there for lunch. I made it by about 11.30 and had my sandwich and chips, which I'd been thinking about all morning. Definitely one of the prettiest parts of Roberts. (The rest looks mainly like Redwood Regional Park, which it directly adjoins.)
From there it was across Skyline Blvd (again) and into Joaquin Miller Park, which I've grown increasingly fond of over recent visits. It's heavily wooded with numerous redwoods, and the bottom of it is a vertical climb down along Sausal Creek. I took a path down that I've grown pretty familiar with, stopped at the "Meadow" to have some more candy and write for a while (and rest!), then headed down through the rest of the park. I know I was writing from sometime before 1pm to sometime after 1pm, and after that I lost track of time.
Next up was Dimond Canyon, which almost directly adjoins Joaquin Miller. (You walk through a tunnel under 13, then walk along a residential street for a bit.) I'd never walked the canyon before, and in fact have been long intimidated by a sign that claims the trail is block at Leimert Bridge. But I looked at the maps carefully and saw that there were two paths going under the Bridge and one going up to the Bridge, and I figured at least one of them would be OK. (I was exactly right.)
The surviving Dimond Canyon trail actually runs along the upper south side of the Canyon, meaning that you're up in the heights. I enjoyed being able to look down into the valley and onto the golf club on the other side (yet, more privilege up in the hills) and across Forest Blvd at various things that I've biked by, while going up that big hill. A side path drops down to Sausal Creek itself, in advance of Leimert Bridge. It was free and unblocked, so I happily took that down. However, at its southmost extent, it was clearly blocked by a few fallen trees, and looking past it, I saw that the path has become almost non-existent, so that's another park that Oakland has let fall into total disrepair. And, it's a crying shame because this is the parkland thoroughfare to Dimond Park proper, and a major way to get up and down the hills in that area without using a car. The cynical part in me wonders if home owners in Oakmore (up at the top of Dimond Canyon) were happy (or even participatory) in that trail getting blocked, to keep plebeians from lower in the hills from having easy access to their hillside properties.
No matter, I had my own route planned for there. I backtracked and took the third (and only remaining) trail up to Leimert Bridge. The fact that there are no trails beyond that, to get back down to the creek, just underlined the segregation. Meanwhile I headed back north along Trestle Glen Road, a long road that winds down from Oakmore to Lake Merritt, through an attractive neighborhood that's one of my favorite rides toward the Oakland Hills. (It's a lot longer when walking.)
And by then I was almost done. There was a stop at Trader Joe's (to get some dinner and some supplies for the trip to Toronto), then a walk around Lake Merritt (and I'm always shocked by how beautiful it is). Then it was over to BART and home ...
Total walk was just short of 50,000 steps and just more than 21 miles, and I was out from about 6.30am to 5pm. By my count the walk out to Castro Valley would have just been 3-4 miles more than what I did, but my feet were aching by the end of my walk, so it's good I didn't do the longer one.
One of the joys of getting up so early is that I get to see Berkeley in an early morning light that I never see, and if it's a Saturday when I have time to go out, and I can have a really full day. So yesterday I was up at 6am, while it was still dark out. By the time I left the house at 6.30, it was gray, though the sun hadn't risen yet.
My general goal was Redwood Regional Park, which is a fair ways away from our house. Rather than going up through Strawberry Canyon into the hills immediately behind our house (which swings me a fair ways north before I head back south), I decided instead to make the ascension up through the canyon containing the Caldecott Tunnel (whose name I still do not know), under the theory that it would get me there quicker.
I was playing it by ear as I headed toward the hills, but I eventually decided to head for the Claremont Hotel, as I vaguely recalled a trail from the employee's parking lot that led up to the Claremont Hills. Sure enough! That's the Evergreen Path. From there, I wandered quiet streets fronted by beautiful, multi-million-dollar homes, most of which were also gated to truly keep the undesirables out. As I walked southward on the hill, I came to a steep, worn stone stairway going up, and after a bit of walking in more rarified airs, I found another steep but better upkept stairway going down. They're both marked but unnamed on Google Maps. I'd never walked either before.
It had been surprisingly foggy throughout the walk, especially in the Hills, and that only increased as I walked up past the Highlands Country Club. (If you are picturing a snooty, overprivileged area, that's the Claremont Hills, and really most of the hills in Berkeley and Oakland.) I eventually got up to Spy Glass Hill, a road that's marked as private (privileged, as I said), but whose only posted restriction is against parking, so I gamely walked across it. On the other side, I was on Hiller Drive, which leads down to the Gateway Exhibit Emergency Preparedness Center (a raised wooden platform with nice views remembering the Berkeley Hills Fire, which back in 1991 actually destroyed most of the area I'd just walked through). From there it was across 24, and into my first of many parks of the day.
The North Oakland Regional Sports Center lies at the bottom of a largely undeveloped area of park (also destroyed in the 1991 firestorm). I hit it at 8am. While walking down Hiller Drive, I could barely see 10 feet ahead of me, an amount of fog that I love but rarely see around our house. But it very abruptly cleared as I hit the Sports Center. It'd been sunny and warm within 10 or 15 minutes, a shocking change.
The "Sports Center" area is largely open with light tree cover; it takes you pretty quickly up a few hundred feet. Although not super attractive, it's a shortcut that keeps you off of Tunnel Road. At the top (which I'd bet is going to get blocked off someday, because it's so semi-official, and there was indeed some threatening construction near the top), I re-merged with Skyline Boulevard and walked that a mile to Sibley, the next park. It's a pity there's no direct connector from the Sports area to Sibley, as there's a lot of open space up there, but that's pretty typical for Oakland's attention to its parks. Once I hit Sibley, though, it was parks for miles and miles, everything connecting until I left Dimond, many hours later.
Oh, and I rediscovered the fog while walking Skyline. It was all clearly visible below me, carpeting the entirety of the East Bay and the bay itself. Mount Tam was visible, more an island than ever, and maybe a few peaks in San Francisco, but for the most part the wide sweep of land and water now visible below me was invisible beneath the fog.
Anywho, Sibley, which I hit at 9am. I didn't take the most attractive route through that park, instead going along the main paved path until I got to the side-path that heads south. That took me into Huckleberry, which is a gorgeous and unique reserve, full of tight paths and ferns. It's largely set in a valley, so when you go from Sibley to Huckleberry, you drop down into that valley and then go back up, which is gorgeous both ways.
There's a connector trail from Sibley to Redwood Regional Park, with a bench right there at a crossroads. Almost four hours after I'd set out, I sat down there and had a few pieces of chocolate to tide me over, as I have before.
I got into the northeast corner of Redwood Regional Park about 10.30am. That was my next big decision point. I have long dreamed of walking to Castro Valley and Google told me it was 12 miles and about four and a half hours to the Castro Valley BART. I seriously considered it, but ultimately decided that I didn't want to strain myself that much three days before a big trip. There was also the option of catching a bus at the Chabot Space & Science Center down to Fruitvale BART, which is what I'd done before when I took a longer route up to Redwood Regional. But ultimately I decided that I could walk longer than that, that I wanted to cut down, down, down the hill and see where it took me. That led me to decide not to dawdle too long in Redwood Regional, which is too bad because it's a beautiful park. But I just hiked around the West Ridge Trail.
I could have avoided Roberts entirely, but there's a beautiful open area there called the Redwood Bowl, and I wanted to stop there for lunch. I made it by about 11.30 and had my sandwich and chips, which I'd been thinking about all morning. Definitely one of the prettiest parts of Roberts. (The rest looks mainly like Redwood Regional Park, which it directly adjoins.)
From there it was across Skyline Blvd (again) and into Joaquin Miller Park, which I've grown increasingly fond of over recent visits. It's heavily wooded with numerous redwoods, and the bottom of it is a vertical climb down along Sausal Creek. I took a path down that I've grown pretty familiar with, stopped at the "Meadow" to have some more candy and write for a while (and rest!), then headed down through the rest of the park. I know I was writing from sometime before 1pm to sometime after 1pm, and after that I lost track of time.
Next up was Dimond Canyon, which almost directly adjoins Joaquin Miller. (You walk through a tunnel under 13, then walk along a residential street for a bit.) I'd never walked the canyon before, and in fact have been long intimidated by a sign that claims the trail is block at Leimert Bridge. But I looked at the maps carefully and saw that there were two paths going under the Bridge and one going up to the Bridge, and I figured at least one of them would be OK. (I was exactly right.)
The surviving Dimond Canyon trail actually runs along the upper south side of the Canyon, meaning that you're up in the heights. I enjoyed being able to look down into the valley and onto the golf club on the other side (yet, more privilege up in the hills) and across Forest Blvd at various things that I've biked by, while going up that big hill. A side path drops down to Sausal Creek itself, in advance of Leimert Bridge. It was free and unblocked, so I happily took that down. However, at its southmost extent, it was clearly blocked by a few fallen trees, and looking past it, I saw that the path has become almost non-existent, so that's another park that Oakland has let fall into total disrepair. And, it's a crying shame because this is the parkland thoroughfare to Dimond Park proper, and a major way to get up and down the hills in that area without using a car. The cynical part in me wonders if home owners in Oakmore (up at the top of Dimond Canyon) were happy (or even participatory) in that trail getting blocked, to keep plebeians from lower in the hills from having easy access to their hillside properties.
No matter, I had my own route planned for there. I backtracked and took the third (and only remaining) trail up to Leimert Bridge. The fact that there are no trails beyond that, to get back down to the creek, just underlined the segregation. Meanwhile I headed back north along Trestle Glen Road, a long road that winds down from Oakmore to Lake Merritt, through an attractive neighborhood that's one of my favorite rides toward the Oakland Hills. (It's a lot longer when walking.)
And by then I was almost done. There was a stop at Trader Joe's (to get some dinner and some supplies for the trip to Toronto), then a walk around Lake Merritt (and I'm always shocked by how beautiful it is). Then it was over to BART and home ...
Total walk was just short of 50,000 steps and just more than 21 miles, and I was out from about 6.30am to 5pm. By my count the walk out to Castro Valley would have just been 3-4 miles more than what I did, but my feet were aching by the end of my walk, so it's good I didn't do the longer one.