INCH Hike: Las Trampas Peak

103. Las Trampas Peak (01/23/99)

Hikers (5): Beth, Peter, Russ, Steve, Taylor
Distance: 4 miles
Rating: 2 difficulty, 8 beauty
Park info: Las Trampas Regional Wilderness near San Ramon

Write-up by Russ

For some reason, it seems like when I am the one doing the hike write-up, it's going to be a cold, miserable, rainy hike. (See Mission Peak or Coit Lake ). This hike was no different.

We should have known that the hike was going to be bad news when the first thing we see is that the parking lot was torn down, forcing us to park at the side of the road. After some brief hesitation, we decided that we came here to hike and we would just do the reverse of our normal hike.

1, 2, 3, ... INCH!

There were a few drops, but nothing that the intrepid hikers couldn't handle. No sooner did we do the INCH cheer than the rain started to fall. For once, everyone was prepared for the bad weather and out came the rain gear. I had my snazzy Goretex jacket and it was time to put it to good use.

We climbed up the Chamise Trail. Esteban with his space boots took the lead, followed by Taylor and Beth. They made to the top of the trail pretty quickly. The Man was gimping along as usual and I was sliding around making more downward progress than upward. When The Man and I were about 2/3 of the way up, he spotted a short cut trail and took that because he thought it would be less slippery. Of course, it is against the INCH credo to short cut and I took the normal trail to the top. I got to the point where the short cut trail met the regular trail and I see The Man on his hands and knees struggling not to slide back down to the bottom. So much for less slippery. That's what one gets for short cutting!

The plan for the hike was to take the Sulphur Spring Trail and do the long loop around the park. Surprisingly, it was Esteban who chimed in and said he had enough of the rain and was willing to cut the hike short. Boy, Muffy really laid into him for that. She said that she was more than willing to do the whole hike and that Esteban was being a wimp. Quite amusing.

In the end, we ended up voting to cut the hike short. I certainly had enough of the rain and understood where Esteban was coming from, but I wasn't going to say that. So on we went along the Las Trampas Ridge Trail to loop back to the car. It was quite slippery on this part of the trail as well, so we continued on the Ridge Trail in the same order that came up Chamise.

At one point, The Man was sliding down the slope back to me and I yelled to him that if he kept sliding down backwards, I would show him that it was better to give than receive. Needless to say he found a way to stop pretty quickly!

Saying it was a miserable rainy hike back to the car could summarize the rest of the trip back along the Las Trampas Ridge and Bollinger Canyon Trail. We were sure glad to be finally done with it.