Getting Out: Mount Diablo is visible anywhere in the Bay Area
with a view to the east, and it is a signpost along the Coast Range
silhouette when we return from the Sierra into the setting sun
Few mountains have landmark credentials exceeding Mount Diablo’s. It is visible anywhere in the Bay Area with a view to the east, and it is a signpost along the Coast Range silhouette when we return from the Sierra into the setting sun.
I don’t know who measures such things, but it is said that Mount Kilimanjaro, at 19,340 feet, is the only mountain with a wider view of the Earth’s surface.
For all the times Mount Diablo has guided me home or that I have skirted its base, I have never edged up its flanks. It had been on my I-gotta-do-that-someday list for a long time until last week. A midweek, clear day in late spring seemed like an ideal time to catch the mountain strutting its stuff. And it was.
A mountain as vast as Diablo cannot be adequately seen in a single hike. Waterfalls and wooded canyons grace the cool canyons of north slope. Open oak woodlands and chaparral dominate the sun-baked south side. I couldn’t see it all, but a hike with a name like the Grand Loop seemed like a good introduction to the park.
On your ride to the 3,849-foot summit, don’t drive just to get there. In fact, a visit that goes no further than Mount Diablo’s flanks is a day well spent. All along South Gate Road and Summit Road – the route I drove up the mountain – there are fabulous picnic sites that overlook Diablo Valley and beyond.
Though my hike left from a point down below, the summit was too close to resist. The view there is at once overpowering and frustrating. No feature of the landscape stands between you and a far off horizon that traces the curvature of the earth. It was a spectacular day with neither fog nor clouds limiting my view, but smog did. On a clear day, one can see Half Dome, the Farallon Islands and even Mount Lassen, but I could not see San Francisco through the murk.
I walked through the summit house and then into the visitor center for some guidance. I also wanted to purchase a map. The volunteer there told me the best place to start my hike and gave me some tips for navigating the confusing web of trail and road junctions on the mountain’s south side.
The Grand Loop is a difficult 7-mile hike that circles Diablo’s summit and would give me a view in every direction by the time I was done. As it turned out, views took a back seat to an unexpected flower display.
The trails that make this loop roll up and down steep gradients tax your legs and lungs on the climbs and your footing on the descents. When you walk down steep trails like these with loose soil underfoot, lean forward. It is counter-intuitive, but keeps your weight over your feet, preventing your feet from shooting out from under you leading to an inelegant and painful toosh-slam on a rough trail.
I saw flowers, gobs of them, including some that I rarely see or have never seen. Along the North Peak Trail and the Bald Ridge Trail, I saw countless red larkspur, the truly beautiful and uncommon wind poppy, three different onions and several clarkias letting us know that spring is waning. Along Meridian Ridge Road, I saw larkspur as tall as me, ready to bloom. You may know flower called a fairy lantern, which hangs like some elegant Japanese garden lamp. I saw many of Mount Diablo’s very own fairy lantern, a lovely yellow that grows nowhere else.
Mount Diablo opened my eyes. I now know what riches are there and that I barely touched them.
Ron Erskine is an outdoors columnist. His column appears every Sunday online at www.freelancenews.com. You can reach him at: ro********@ms*.com
