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canyonwalkerOur trip to the Sunol Wilderness wasn't just about seeing birds of prey along the way. The birds were a nice bonus. The main point of our outing was to hike: specifically, to climb Flag Hill.
Flag Hill is difficult to see from the trailhead. The trail starts near a creek, and the dense stand of trees along the creek make it hard to see the hill above. But once we gained even 50' of elevation on the trail the escarpment of Flag Hill came into clear view.
This was our main view for what seemed like quite a long time. Though we labored and huffed and puffed up the trail the ridge barely seemed to get closer. Ahead of us was "up". To our left, up. To the right, also up. The only way to really gauge our progress was to look back and see how high above the valley we'd climbed.
Soon enough we reached Flag Hill. The monument announcing the location struck me as superfluous. We'd been looking up at this blasted ridge for the last 90 minutes as we labored to climb 1,000 feet up from the valley below. We know when we're at the top!
If they were going to put a big sign up here I wish they'd put one to tell us why it's actually called Flag Hill. Sure, okay, someone probably put a flag here at some point, but why? At 1,320' this isn't even the highest peak in the area. There are literally higher peaks and ridges visible in every direction, including 2,500'+ Mission Peak to the west. There's a nice view south over the Calaveras Reservoir (above) though.
We could've headed home by retracing our steps down the steep front face of Flag Hill, but where's the fun in that? Fortunately there are loop trails. Having taken the hard, steep trail up the mountain we were able to take a gentler one down. We dropped down through High Valley Camp (above), a converted old ranch that dates back to 1939. The area has been used for cattle ranching since Spanish missionaries arrived in the 1700s.
We arrived back at the trailhead around 5:10pm. The "golden hour" you can see in some of the pictures here had already turned to the "blue hour" by then; the sun had already dropped below the mountains to the west, casting twilight across the valley. Still, that was earlier than the 5:30 return I'd estimated. We'd covered 4 miles and 1,000' of climbing in just over 2.5 hours, including stops.
Flag Hill is difficult to see from the trailhead. The trail starts near a creek, and the dense stand of trees along the creek make it hard to see the hill above. But once we gained even 50' of elevation on the trail the escarpment of Flag Hill came into clear view.
This was our main view for what seemed like quite a long time. Though we labored and huffed and puffed up the trail the ridge barely seemed to get closer. Ahead of us was "up". To our left, up. To the right, also up. The only way to really gauge our progress was to look back and see how high above the valley we'd climbed.
Soon enough we reached Flag Hill. The monument announcing the location struck me as superfluous. We'd been looking up at this blasted ridge for the last 90 minutes as we labored to climb 1,000 feet up from the valley below. We know when we're at the top!
If they were going to put a big sign up here I wish they'd put one to tell us why it's actually called Flag Hill. Sure, okay, someone probably put a flag here at some point, but why? At 1,320' this isn't even the highest peak in the area. There are literally higher peaks and ridges visible in every direction, including 2,500'+ Mission Peak to the west. There's a nice view south over the Calaveras Reservoir (above) though.
We could've headed home by retracing our steps down the steep front face of Flag Hill, but where's the fun in that? Fortunately there are loop trails. Having taken the hard, steep trail up the mountain we were able to take a gentler one down. We dropped down through High Valley Camp (above), a converted old ranch that dates back to 1939. The area has been used for cattle ranching since Spanish missionaries arrived in the 1700s.
We arrived back at the trailhead around 5:10pm. The "golden hour" you can see in some of the pictures here had already turned to the "blue hour" by then; the sun had already dropped below the mountains to the west, casting twilight across the valley. Still, that was earlier than the 5:30 return I'd estimated. We'd covered 4 miles and 1,000' of climbing in just over 2.5 hours, including stops.
