First post of 2012-Cold Canyon New Years Day Hike

Ok so this hike was actually Jan 2, but we were all busy recovering from our late night on New Year's Eve, plus our hiking group had various conflicts for New Years Day, so Monday it was.  Pam, Ted, and I met up with Frances and Doug at the trailhead at about 11AM.  Took us 35 min to get there, F took an hour.

This trail is very steep in sections.

This years hiking group, I'm behind the camera

Weather was perfect, not too warm.

The views never get old.

Due to our recent Mt. Diablo climb we were in pretty good shape, and nobody was sore the next day.  We heard some wrentits and Ted saw and heard a California Thrasher.  Unfortunately, Pam and I missed that.
Previous New Years Day hikes at Cold Canyon 2010, 2011

Update in response to comment

Vertical exaggeration turned to 2x.

I guess our legs can detect changes in elevation that are too small to see in the charts!

Last Post of 2011

Take Eagle Peak Trail first. Come back on Mitchell Canyon Trail, unless you enjoy steep downhill.

Didn't have time to post this earlier what with all the New Years Eve prep.  Had a great Holiday Season.  Lots of fun and games.  Today just hanging out, picking up the Christmas mess, watching football, recovering from the rich food of the past week.
F wanted to take a hike on her birthday, and told us to pick the hike. Chose the Eagle Peak-Mitchell Canyon Trail on Mt. Diablo.  Even though it's close we have almost never gone hiking there (well, a couple of short walks on trails at the peak).  One of the web sites we saw said it was a 5 mile hike and another said 8 miles.  Turns out the 8 miles was correct!

As soon as we reached Eagle Peak a clould blew in.

This was quite a hike!  Even in the dead of winter it was very fun, required lots of exertion, we went through lots of different vegetation, and saw lots of very fat birds.  The food must be plentiful at Mt. Diablo. Took an hour to get to the trail head in no traffic.  Finished off the day with yummy Indian food.  Every one of us was sore the next day!  However we are looking forward to more hair of the dog and our Cold Canyon hike on Jan 2.

The trail track from the
GPS viewed in Google Earth

My New Years Resolution-keep up this blog!

I wanted very much to take our annual New Years Day hike up Cold Canyon, but the weather was gray and showery, so we deferred. As it turned out, that was a good decision, since John, Anthea, Lang, and Cammie came to our house on Jan 2. They arrived about 1:45 p.m. Frances was in Davis so we had some coordination issues, but we all managed to rendezvous at the trailhead at 2:30pm.

The weather was unexpectedly warm. Because we started so late, by the time we reached the top of the ridge, we had it to ourselves. We reached the top about 4 pm and stopped to admire the scenery and have a water and snack break. The second half of the hike was longer than I remembered. We continued along the ridge for quite some distance with more up and down, before the trail finally turned downward for good. By the time we reached the turnoff for the dam overlook it was quite dim, so we continued hustling down the trail. The others were far ahead of Ted and myself. The kids go at zoom speed hiking downhill, and the parents wanted to keep up with them. But only Frances was able to keep up with the boys. We finally reached the end of the trail at about 5:20 and it was pretty dark by this time. Great hike but my knees are still sore!