Day/Date : Sunday, 26 March 2007
Location : Mt Diablo State Park
Trail Distance : 14 miles (22.5km)
Total climb : 3400ft (1036m)
Duration : 7hr 40 min
Heart Rate (HR) Monitor
In zone 2 : 1 hr 14 min
Average HR : 141
Peak HR : 179
Minimum HR : 76
Total Calorie : 4968 cal
This is my last preparation before set of to the long trekking next week. I have been training in past 4 month, monitoring my physical ability, and put lots lots pain on my muscles.
Mt Diablo is lying not far from San Francisco Bay Area. It’s sacred for the native America as Miwok and Ohlone. But the name of Diablo came from Spanish military who failed attacking the Indians. Then they called it ‘Monte del Diablo’ or thickest of the Devil. Then the English speaking people mistakenly prefer Monte as Mountain. So here we are the Devil Mountain of California.
We chose the hardest trail (uh…I should say NO for picking this). But the temptation to push myself in 14miles solid hiking was unbearable. I had several thing to do such as check my GPS ability and my fitness based on Heart Rate Monitor System.
The route as described here :
We started from Mitchell Canyon Road up to Deer Flat Road. The road was designed for fire brigade to control bush fire. So the path is quite wide and well marked. Along the road we saw lots new wild flower just about arising its beautiful colour. The jay birds also easy to spot in many area. We stopped in Deer Flat for bar a chocolate.
From Deer Flat followed the Juniper Trail to the Lower Summit parking lots. Oh yes you actually can go to the summit with car, riding a horse or cycling. The summit itself not far from the lower summit. Just follow the path to the big telecommunication antenna.
We spent a while on the summit to visiting the centre. It is nice old building built during the establishment of state park in California. It’s has well laid display of the natural beauty in Mt Diablo.
Then we went off to go down through Devil Elbow, the zig zag route down through beautiful landscape. We followed the Prospectus Gap which lead us to another hill via North Peak Trail. The view just fantastic. We can see hundreds of wind mill gather the pacific turbulence wind.
We then move to Murchio Gap through Bald Ridge Trail which basically through walk path than the fire road. It is nice when you feel nobody around. Only birds and sun along with you. Oh the weather was nice too.
Down to Back Creek Trail we move to Coulter Pine Trail at the base of the mountain and follow the nice path along the river. Then back to the visitor centre. Yes it’s been a hard day….
We did not take many photos during the trips. I managed to track my hiking path with GPS receiver, uploaded into Google Earth (GE). The GE Plus let us to transfer data to create path based the data of location and elevation. The result just stunning! I can see my path even looked like 3D now..
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