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Published: January 3rd 2007
Golden Gate
Looked rather dull today!The thought of being in an island on New Year’s eve can be really fascinating!
Can it? Or maybe not? Well! I was going to find it out.
When time came to decide how to spend New Year’s eve, I certainly wanted to keep up the tradition:
• not staying at home
• doing something that we’ve never done before.
Ganesh did not have any specifics. So, Ram was up for it when I brought this up. I was not sure how far this was going to materialize. What to say of the weather? It was the peak of an El Nino December winter.
This plan pretty much finalized in the last 1 week.
Angel Island is right in the middle of San Francisco bay.
Map We had 2 other friends, Charanya & Sriram, join in for this backpacking trip!
Sunday,31st Dec: 10 am, all of them came over to our place to run a final checklist before the trip.
Weather update: 40%!c(MISSING)hance of showers & New Year’s low: 37F. That is really cold.
It was a good 90 min drive to Tiburon, from where we had to ride the
ferry (Angel Island ferry was the only service
Fireworks
There you go! Happy New Year on New Year’s day).
Finding an overnight parking seemed to take a little a little longer than we expected, but Ram & Ganesh found a parking on Tiburon Blvd for $4/day. We caught the 1.00 pm ferry right by the edge. It was a 10 minute ride to Angel Island. We picked up a map from the Ranger, there, at Ayala cove (ferry landing). It was a 2 mile hike up to our east bay site #1.
The 5 mile perimeter road (name says it all, I’m sure) is an easier way to get there, but to get a hiking experience, we picked the north ridge trail. The first 100 ft climbed immediately. Then followed 140 steps up to the perimeter road. Further continuing on north ridge trail, it was a much steady climb up until the fire road. We took the almost flat fire road a couple more minutes to reach our site.
Up the trail, we met our fellow campers, who envied our site describing how flat our site was. 😊
Once at the site, all of us settled down. All of a sudden everyone seemed to be hungry. Hunger attended to,
Angel Island
Half way thru the stairs we got to setting up both the tents. That done, we went around to check out the trail that lead to Mt.Livermore. (a little bit off-trail adventure included)
It was getting dark & just around one of the many corners, we got to see the lighted city of San Francisco. And what a sight it was!!!
We stopped right there to set up our tripods and take some shots. After some 30-45 minutes, we decided to come back later.
Back at the site, we had dinner. It was getting colder. Despite the clouds, we still saw the clear moon & stars at intervals. That’s when we cleaned up both the picnic tables, brought out our sleeping bags and lay down on the tables & chairs. We planned to get into our bags, look up at the sky & stars. Well! turned out that it was not possible for more than a couple minutes. Ganesh had a quick nap, somehow. We pushed ourselves out of our bags around 10.00 pm. We packed the stove & got ready to get to the top. The trail to the top of Mt.Livermore was longer than it should have been. We were at
the top at 11.15 pm, probably.
By the time we got there, we were all literally sweating. But in just 10 minutes, we could feel the cold. By the time, we all had our hot chocolates, it was almost time for the New Year fireworks. In just a couple of minutes, clock ticked 12 and there went the fireworks. While it was all happening, I could not help but think of the year 2004 when Ganesh took me to the city to see the fireworks. I certainly could not see the city crowd from the island, but I was sure, the streets would be flooded. And there we were at the island - just the five of us at the top of a the tallest mountain in Angel Island getting a 360 view of the entire bay 😱 How exciting!
It certainly brings a lot of happiness & contentment just thinking of it all. A 360 degree view from the mountain top. The fireworks: Tiburon, behind us, went off first. A teeny bit of Oakland, a small but grand one from Berkeley, adding to the Grand finale from the bay & bay bridge from San Francisco-
Trail gets easier from here...
Just a few more minutes to go! a view from the top (Mt. Livermore at 780ft abv sea level). It was all over and we were on our way down. The sky cleared up and we could see some stars. On our way down, Ram was explaining the constellations-Sirius, Orion & the seven sisters & how to spot them. It was a good walk down in the moonlight. The moon was so bright that we could have walked back without our flashlights.
Back at our tents, we were only too tired to even think of anything else.
Ganesh & Ram planned for a sunrise hike to Mt.Livermore before hugging sleep. I was not too sure if I was going to join though 😊
We realized we could not do a sunrise hike when we got up at 7.00 am. It was so cold to even push my head out of my bag. When I opened up the tent, all I saw was fog. After telling the guys not to feel bad for not having missed sunrise, I pushed myself out of the tent and I remember seeing this huge white mass between the island and Oakland. The tents were all dripping wet. One
Done with the tent
Overlooking the East bay city & hills by one, everyone got out and started feeling the Sun in a while. We skipped breakfast and went for lunch instead. So, we planned to catch the earlier 1.30pm ferry. It took a while before we had our tents dry out, though.
It was a quick hike back down to the ferry landing. After a brief stop at Ghirardelli square (downtown SF) for sundaes, we found our way home at around 4.30pm.
Quite tired, but what a wonderful way to spend the New Year!
Trips such as these makes you feel more humble. You are pretty much at Nature's mercy; You get to know who's the Boss 😊
Vacations bring out a lot of things within you, don’t they?
Travelbuffs
-Again! Its all about the journey…
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TR.aveler
non-member comment
nice blog.. 37F? Really cold?? hehe.. I guess you should get used to much worse cold if you wanna venture out of california in winter!!