HIdden Vallley Ridge Trail, 5.1 miles, 600Kcal, 2hr 10min

This week we decided to go on a smaller hike due to everyone being preoccupied with volunteering activity for the Indian festival Sri Rama Navami. There was one more reason we chose to go for a small hike, we did not want to get exhausted as we wanted to stay awake and watch the Cricket World Cup final :).  But the hike still had its challenges, a very foggy morning, badly maintained trail, and of course cows that refused to give way forcing us to go off-trail.  We spotted a dead snake on our way back. By the second half of the hike, the fog cleared out giving us glorious sun kissed views of Mt. Diablo and the Tassajara valley. We also had a couple of new members join the hiking group.and hopefully they enjoyed getting their dirty:).



Route: Hidden Valley Ridge Trail.
Time: 2hr 10 min
Difficulty: 3/10

HIdden Vallley Ridge Trail, 4.8 miles, 960Kcal, 2hr 10min

It's long weekend!!  We had to move our hiking plan to Friday in order to watch FIFA matches. So we wanted to do a hike near our home just to be back by 9AM to watch quarter finals match France vs Germany. Also for this hike, we have few more friends joined. The Sun was out by 7A.M. I personally don't like to do this trail in summer as it doesn't offer any shade. With severe drought all the grass turned golden yellow and soil is pretty dry. It gives completely different  picture during monsoon season vs in summer. On our way back home we saw a skeleton bone of a snake :).

Route: Hidden Valley Ridge Trail.
Time: 2hr 10 min
Difficulty: 3/10

serious climber

Golden hills

Snake skeleton

HIdden Vallley Ridge Trail, 4.8 miles, 960Kcal, 2hr 30min

We decided to do the same hike this week as well before we move on to other Trails. We also had a smaller group turn this week due to Flu season. For some reason, this time we felt it was a drag and at times felt whether we can meet the goal that we set in this year. We looked at Mt. Diablo from a view point and all of us were clueless as how we did that hike last year. It was just 7 months back that we did this hike and now we feel that we may not able to do it..

HIdden Vallley Ridge Trail, 4.8 miles, 960Kcal, 2hr 30min

Welcome back in new year 2014. Well, all of us are back from vacations, parties etc etc. Now it's time to set new goals for this year :). We had set a new goal to hike at least 200 miles this year. We want to start of with a small hike as it's been a while since we last hiked. The same hike we did multiple times but this time it was so depressing to look at the views. There was no signs of the small ponds which we used to see along the trail. There was absolutely no greenery anywhere. We all hiked at our own pace and caught up on other stuff. So we did not feel the hike was strenuous.

Route: Hidden Valley Ridge Trail.
Time: 2hr 30 min
Difficulty: 3/10