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New Year's Day 3-Peaks

01 Jan 2018

Reading time ~3 minutes

My “normal” New Year’s Day morning for the last few years have been running up Mt. Diablo with my running friends in the east bay. A month prior, I decided to challenge myself a little and tried to attempt the 3 peaks in the bay area: Mt. Tam (North Bay), Mt. Diablo (East Bay), and Mt. Hamilton (South Bay). Obviously this would include a lot of running and driving. And with less than a month to get ready, I was just gonna peak 2 mountains and end the day at Windy Hill in the Peninsula … But somehow that just didn’t feel like a true 3-peaks.

New Year’s Eve is sooo over-rated! ;P, I went to bed at 1030pm since my plan was to wake up at 3am. Unfortunately the neighbors were blasting loud music all night so that didn’t go too well.

BUT I did manage to wake up at 3am, got myself ready and left the house at 4am’ish.

Overall, I had a great day and it was a great way to start the new year. But it would be more fun if there were more people doing it with me instead of solo’ing. I was able to catch the sunrise on Mt. Tam, high noon on Mt. Diablo, and sunset on Mt. Hamilton.

Mt. Tam

Parked my car at the Stinson Beach Fire Station; where the Miwok 100K start/finish, headed up the Dipsea Trail in the crack of dawn. Pitch black and scary as hell going thru the woods. Made it up to the light house just before sunrise. Hung out there with some other hikers/runners for a bit before running back down.

Distance: 14.5 miles
Elevation Gain: 3212ft
Running Time: 2h42m
Strava: Part 1, Part 2
Driving Time: 1h10m

Mt. Diablo

Parked at Emmons Canyon like I normally do on for the New Year’s Day Mt. Diablo Summit run. Bumped into few friends who were on their way down from the top. Talked for a bit and exchanged some short stories.

This was the hilliest one of the three, I legs were struggling with 2 miles to the top, had to walk a lot more than I was planning. Once I got to the top and took few pictures, it was time to get back down since I still have to drive to San Jose and another mountain to run. I bonked on the way down, sat by the picnic bench for about 15 minutes for my hands and stomach to return to normal again.

Distance: 13 miles
Elevation Gain: 3714ft
Running Time: 2h56m
Strava: Mt. Diablo
Driving Time: 1h

Mt. Hamilton

Since I had no prior experience with Mt. Hamilton, I searched Strava the day before and found a 13 mile route. It is basically starting from the bottle of the mountain and run 6.5 miles up … on the road … with NO shoulders … oh well. It was a slow and steady grind. Since I started at 345pm, I had about 1.5 hours to summit and catch the sunset.

I made it to the observatory at the top just in time for the sunset. Took some picture and ran back down in the dark with the super moon in the sky.