Monthly Hike: Bald Mountain

New year, so I think it’s time for a new monthly feature. Victoria and I used to go hiking all the time, but had fallen off the wagon a bit in recent years. In 2009, we want to do more “hardcore hiking” again. We started yesterday, with a hike up Bald Mountain at Sugarloaf Ridge, one of Sonoma’s prime state parks. We had hiked there before, but we’d never gone all the way into the park and taken the trip up Bald Mountain. We went without expectations, got much more than we’d bargained for, but found a trail that was totally worth the effort.

Although only 2729 feet high, Bald Mountain affords amazing views of the surroundings when you get to the top. Mt Tam, Mt Diablo, Napa, Sonoma, Marin, San Francisco, Angel Island and the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge are all visible. You can even see the snowy silhouette of Pyramid Peak, 10,000 feet high and 129 miles away in the Sierras. Getting to the summit takes a bit of stamina: the 2700 foot ascend stretches across (only) 2.8 miles and has some steep sections. The way back down (via the Gray Pines trail) might be even trickier, because loose rubble turns even steeper sections into a serious balance challenge. We had a lot of fun and the weather was beautiful (74 degrees in January!). The only downside was that we didn’t bring a real camera, so all of the following photos are low-res iPhone pictures.