Advertisement
Published: February 13th 2007
Edit Blog Post
When: Sunday, 11th Feb
What: Peak over the Peninsula
Where: San Bruno Mountain State & County Park
Distance: 4.9 miles
Another hike from
"101 hikes in Northern CA" Rain in the bay area! Much awaited, but not welcomed this weekend! Rained like hell on Saturday. Sunday's forecast spelled rain, but sky seemed to clear out, at least near home.
Late start, nevertheless, we started!
We took the scenic I280 to Daly city. Unpredicted weather peaked in & out! No plans of turning back.
Directions:
Took the Mission Street Exit on 280 N.
L on Junipero Serra Blvd
R on San Pedro Blvd
Continue along Guadalupe Canyon Pkwy & turn L onto the park.
Self registration required($5 day use fee)
We were doing the Ridge trail. So, we drove all the way to the top of the summit. It was freaking cold with low clouds & windy. I had no clue which direction we parked the car (I forgot to take a handy compass 😞). I walked to the other side & then I saw a familiar site!
SF downtown. Okay! at least I know which way is N.
The trail head was right there.
We could see all the way
up to East peak(without knowing that was it!). The trail was pretty much straight forward. We wondered why it was mentioned as the only Strenuous hike in the park.
The hike was well graded(up & down). To the left were views of SF downtown, twin peaks, Richmond-San Rafael bridge. To the right were SF airport & San Mateo bridge.
As the book mentioned, we caught some raptors flying around(never got close to get a shot or to figure what they were)
We reached East Peak. But continued a little further. The trail started descending almost immediately, giving closer views of hwy 101. We must have gone maybe 1/4th of a mile when I got the "this was going nowhere" feeling. Ganesh still wanted to check it further. He went down for 5 minutes & turned back.
The hike back up was steep, but was very much doable. We got back to the car in less than an hr.
While we were coming down the road, I noticed how bright the Sun was. Before exiting the park, there was this short 1 mile loop (Eucalyptus grove). We took that too. The entire view repeated itself, only at a lower
level.
The Sun was still bright & the clouds seem to clear around the coast. We had initially wanted to come back home along 101, but in the greed to get some sunset pictures, we took hwy 1 S.
Terrible hunger made us stop at Quiznos @ Pacifica. This was our first ride on hwy1 after devil's slide was opened. I just stopped at this parking lot, where I felt the Sun go down straight. There was a short slope to get into the State Beach(Montara) & there was a series of steps to get down to the beach.
We got down & I should say, the rest is history 😊. I got some cool sunset shots & Ganesh got some after sunset, low exposure shots. Well, we had to get our feet wet(freezing water). The tide soon picked up & it just did not make sense to stay back any further. So, turned back to the car. Almost dark!!!
Back home via hwy 92 & 280. After a long time, got behind a slow driver all along 92
Came home... fully refreshed??? Naaaaah! all tired!😞 But happy after an eventful day!
After a routine
thats me
Inspire me, San Francisco! week, we get ready for another long roadtrip😊
See you in a bit!
-travelbuffs
Advertisement
Tot: 0.308s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 26; qc: 127; dbt: 0.153s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
vividvoyagers
non-member comment
Nice pix
Nice sun set shots ! The low exposure shot is especially very good