Hiking Las Trampas
Feb. 26th, 2024 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerThis past Saturday we went hiking at Las Trampas Regional Wilderness near San Ramon, California. It's part of the East Bay Regional Park District. Casual park-goers might not think much of this place. Way up at the end of Bollinger Canyon road it's got just a few picnic tables and not even a jungle gym or anything. But what it does have is a beautiful jumping off point for a variety of hikes.
We first found this park years ago through a listing for the Rocky Ridge trail in our "Hiker's Bible" guidebook. After hiking the Rocky Ridge trail at least once, maybe twice, I got curious about the other trails in the park. We hiked a loop around the Las Trampas Ridge, on the opposite side of the canyon. The first time it was pretty foggy, so we tried a second time. I found I liked it better. Now it's my go-to hike in this area.
As "go-to" hikes go, I've been waiting a while to go back to this one! I started thinking about coming here in January but the weather wasn't quite right— too many rainy weekends and not enough clear days. Then I thought maybe we'd do our Superbowl Sunday hike here. We were a little short on time on energy that weekend as I was recovering from a cold/bronchitis episode so we did a shorter hike at Coyote Hills. Then I was sick again, and the weather was dreary, too, so another week passed. But finally the planets aligned. The weather was stupendous Saturday, the hills were still green, and I was partly over being sick. So I shoved my pockets full of pills and my inhaler (I would eventually use all of them on this hike 😰) and we set off to Las Trampas.
The trail starts along Bollinger Creek (seen in the first photo) where the paved road ends. The first mile or so follows a fire road up through the valley (photo above). There were some muddy patches on this road this weekend. The hills are a beautiful green, though. It's hard to have one without the other. But this weekend was a nearly perfect combination of there having been enough rain recently to keep these East Bay hills and mountains green, combined with enough dry days this past week to keep the place from being a mud bog, combined with that amazing, 70° weather we had on Saturday. We knew we had to get our hike on!
Huffing and puffing up the canyon, then up the hill to the ridge line was... well, a lot of huffing and puffing. I'm really not over round 2 of this cold/bronchitis yet. But I was determined not to let that stop me. It would only... force me to walk slower.
One fun thing about the trails up here is that there are enough little variations that we can hike a slightly different route each time so it's not simply a duplicate of our previous route. For example, when we were last here two years years ago we took a shortcut over the ridge. That saved us steps we used to stretch the hike out further south along the ridge. This time we enjoyed seeing this northern end of the ridge (above).
Then... LOLWUT? MOAR up?! Yup! But it'd come with another great view once we're over the summit.
Stay tuned for more!
Update: More in part 2 of this hike!
We first found this park years ago through a listing for the Rocky Ridge trail in our "Hiker's Bible" guidebook. After hiking the Rocky Ridge trail at least once, maybe twice, I got curious about the other trails in the park. We hiked a loop around the Las Trampas Ridge, on the opposite side of the canyon. The first time it was pretty foggy, so we tried a second time. I found I liked it better. Now it's my go-to hike in this area.
As "go-to" hikes go, I've been waiting a while to go back to this one! I started thinking about coming here in January but the weather wasn't quite right— too many rainy weekends and not enough clear days. Then I thought maybe we'd do our Superbowl Sunday hike here. We were a little short on time on energy that weekend as I was recovering from a cold/bronchitis episode so we did a shorter hike at Coyote Hills. Then I was sick again, and the weather was dreary, too, so another week passed. But finally the planets aligned. The weather was stupendous Saturday, the hills were still green, and I was partly over being sick. So I shoved my pockets full of pills and my inhaler (I would eventually use all of them on this hike 😰) and we set off to Las Trampas.
The trail starts along Bollinger Creek (seen in the first photo) where the paved road ends. The first mile or so follows a fire road up through the valley (photo above). There were some muddy patches on this road this weekend. The hills are a beautiful green, though. It's hard to have one without the other. But this weekend was a nearly perfect combination of there having been enough rain recently to keep these East Bay hills and mountains green, combined with enough dry days this past week to keep the place from being a mud bog, combined with that amazing, 70° weather we had on Saturday. We knew we had to get our hike on!
Huffing and puffing up the canyon, then up the hill to the ridge line was... well, a lot of huffing and puffing. I'm really not over round 2 of this cold/bronchitis yet. But I was determined not to let that stop me. It would only... force me to walk slower.
One fun thing about the trails up here is that there are enough little variations that we can hike a slightly different route each time so it's not simply a duplicate of our previous route. For example, when we were last here two years years ago we took a shortcut over the ridge. That saved us steps we used to stretch the hike out further south along the ridge. This time we enjoyed seeing this northern end of the ridge (above).
Then... LOLWUT? MOAR up?! Yup! But it'd come with another great view once we're over the summit.
Stay tuned for more!
Update: More in part 2 of this hike!
Nice hike
Date: 2024-02-27 08:36 pm (UTC)Re: Nice hike
Date: 2024-05-19 08:24 pm (UTC)