Mt. Diablo...

There are so many beautiful places in the Bay Area, and I'm glad that I seem to be visiting them at a decent 'clip'. My latest adventure involved cycling up Mt. Diablo with a bunch of the boys from our lab:

Mt. Diablo lies just outside of Danville and is a ~45 mins drive from San Francisco.

I thought I was going to die: It's an 11 mi (17.6 km) road that climbs ~3,500 ft (~1.1 km). It starts off on a relatively shallow grade and, sadly, the steepest part is right at the end - just as you've pretty much exhausted your energy. My GPS watch captured our trail:

Despite the struggle (I really need to get more exercise) I did manage to take a few pictures of the absolutely gorgeous views: 

It is very much a bike ride along a road dug out of the side of a mountain. While not dangerous per se, there are some pretty steep and far drops off of the roadside.

The view from the summit is pretty spectacular, and worth seeing even if you only have the energy to drive a car up to the top.

The coolest aspect to the trip was that after a rest on the summit following the grueling 1h 45min bike up, we got to speed all of the way down. It's almost entirely downhill in the opposite direction, so all you have to do is break carefully such that you don't fly off of a cliff during a sharp turn. Even on a beautiful day, the wind racing past us made it chilly, so it's worth bringing a jacket.

As usual, I've created a Picasa Web Album of all of the shots I took while I was biking. Mt. Diablo is yet another feature of the Bay Area that I'd recommend to anyone planning on visiting!

Comments

[Diablo 3 Online]

You bring up some good points Diablo.