The first one here, wasn't planned. We were looking at going over to Half Moon Bay and try to catch Maverick, the giant wave surfing competition, but the waves were not cooperating.
We had talked about Mission Peak the last time I was here but cloud cover prevented us from trying it.
Here is the trail map....
We came in from the Stanford parking lot. Mission Peak stands 2517ft at the top. This trail takes you 2200 feet in about 3 miles. So all together we are looking at a 6 mile hike. Yeah....after a 5 hour plane ride.We were just going to go up the trail a little ways....HA
So we left the parking lot gear in hand...just heading up the trail a bit. The sun is setting so I know right off the bat, that any shooting I do could be into the sun which is obviously not ideal. We walked a pretty brisk pace and it was kind of steep. My legs started to burn and I was sweating and starting to breath hard and we weren't even to the first bench.
Now Matt, he's a professional hiker...he's been all over these mountains many times. Cool, calm and collected and he almost ate all of our snacks at the top while I was shooting pictures!
Lesson learned...don't leave the snack bag with Matt.
We made it to the first bench...and decided to go on to the next bench. We made it there, looked up and decided to go on to the next bench. After all there were grandma's already up that far!By the third bench, we decided we had just enough sun light left to get to the top.
This is rounding the last bend and heading to the top, the top is to my back. I'm facing north towards Oakland in this picture:
This is looking the other way to the top:
Did I mention there were cows everywhere...grazing. Yep...you go anywhere near them they run. HAHA...Not that I would know. :-)
Once we made it to the top, the cooler air was quite a relief. Matt on the other hand was obviously prepared and busted out his parka and stocking cap. He arrived several minutes ahead of me....I had to take a couple extra breaks in there.
Once at the top, this is the view back down to the parking lot where we started. Its right in the center:
This is looking north to San Fran:
Great views. Really caused some leg burn in a few areas. I wasn't really sure I wanted to go all the way to the top, because I was planning a pretty extensive Yosemite hike, and last years hike to the Upper Falls just about did me in. So I was afraid I was going to be too sore from this hike to do anything extensive in Yosemite.....too late...we're at the top eating our snacks and taking pictures. Suns going down so we head out. It takes us 57 minutes to get back to the car. Now its off for some lunch.....yep...I haven't eaten all day...yet!
Next major post will be the Yosemite trip. This will take me some time to do the pictures. Very cool stuff!
I do have a couple interesting/funny pictures I'm going to add in as well between...
As usual, all of the pictures can be found on my smugmug site....jscranton.smugmug.com
Until next time...
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