I wanted to save the toughest for last to wrap up the Bay Area Six-Pack and I chose the right mountain for the job. In spite of stiff (and steep) competition from the likes of Diablo, Tamalpais and Sizer, Rose Peak was in a class of its own in terms of physical exertion. For starters, it's the longest of the trails at nearly 20 miles in and back, more than three miles longer than the brutal Mt. Sizer. Moreover, while it may not be technically as steep as the most challenging sections of Sizer, Rose Peak provides more consistently steep terrain than any mountain in the Bay Area. It starts you off immediately for about 2 miles of consistently hard climbing. Then it sends you down into a gulch just so you can do an equally steep but very different sort of climb: a narrow scramble through trees and brush that spits you out on the top of some very beautiful rolling hills. The hills were covered in yellow and blue wildflowers and dotted with small ponds. This serene stretch was full of wildlife (I had a reasonably close encounter with a black-tailed jackrabbit) and gave me an hour or so's rest before the final hike to the summit. The last hour of hiking becomes very steep one last time and drops your exhausted bones on the top of a rocky, wind-swept outcropping with a stunning view of Mt. Diablo. What makes Rose Peak even more daunting is that it gives you just enough downhill on the way there to make sure that you have some serious climbing to do on the way back. Like Mt. Sizer, this is not a mountain where you get all, or even most, of your climbing done on the way there. It throws relentless steeps at you the entire journey. I was happy to meet my goal of 8 hours (the average time seems to be around 11 hours) with 5 minutes to spare. 7 hours and 55 minutes of arduous, beautiful trekking to put the Bay Area Six-Pack of Peaks in the books. I couldn't have picked a more fulfilling way to wrap this up. Now my Sierra Summer begins!
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Responses
Oh man, I am NOT looking forward to this one. Diablo gave me sore legs for days, based on your write up, this is going to be brutal. Thanks for sharing.