Dawn to Night Rose Peak round trip

Arriving before dawn at Sunol Regional Wilderness, we discovered the parking lot is only open 8am – 5pm, not really long enough to do the expected 18 mile round trip with 5000′ of elevation hike. Not wanting to wait over an hour, we parked on the road above the park and hiked an extra 1+ miles to reach our planned trailhead at 7:30am. Sunrise finally met us around 8am as we passed a huge boulder in the middle of the roadway that must have rolled down overnight (it was gone by the time we returned at end of day).

Most of the steep climbing is in the middle, leading up to the backpacking camps and for a little ways past them. We tried taking the Portuguese Point road and Brogan Route to avoid the steep dip and that worked somewhat but was bushwhacking for a bit and still steep. We reached the summit about 1:00pm.  It was still cold and breezy up there, so after the requisite pictures and log-book signing, we went down to near the Doe Horse Camp turnoff to eat our lunches.

We made it back to the planned trailhead around 5:40pm, after dark, but not alone out there. Back to our car at 6:10pm after the “bonus hike”.  Clearly, this is a hike better suited to either overnight, as we’ve done it in the past, or longer days earlier in the year.

That was our final peak for 2025!  What a fun adventure it was.