Mission Peak – unexpected views

4th hike of the challenge. The night before we camped at sunol campground and had a beautiful sunset, which was perfect for a birthday celebration. After getting up very early in the morning we hiked up the mountain in the dark. It was a cloudy night, but once the sun rose up at the mountain peak we could enjoy clear view and our own shadows in the clouds surrounded by a rainbow. Just perfect!

Wikipedia: Brocken specter; German: Brockengespenst), also called Brocken bow, mountain spectre, or spectre of the Brocken is the magnified (and apparently enormous) shadow of an observer cast in mid air upon any type of cloud opposite a strong light source. The figure’s head can be surrounded by a bright area called Heiligenschein, or halo-like rings of rainbow-coloured light forming a glory, which appear opposite the Sun’s direction when uniformly sized water droplets in clouds refract and backscatter sunlight.