Mission Peak Regional Park, the hike that never ended

After a healthy breakfast of Green Eggs and Ham (a play on Dr Seuss, I tend to add a lot of fresh herbs and spinach to Sunday morning omelets), we loaded up the truck for the drive across the bay to the Mission Peak Regional Park.  Out goal was to hike to the top and come down.  Unlike many of the Peninsula  parks which have few visitors, this place was jammed packed like an E ride at Disney.  We had to park a good distance away.  GF had picked out the route of the Bay Area Hiker, and a book from the author of the web site.  We started off easy enough but about 1/2 mile in We working a little harder than normal. We worked our way up with a lot of foot traffic up the main trail.  about 1/2 mile before the peak we stopped and had lunch.  You can see the winery/slash horse farm/helipad, that this wasn't your average farmers home.  Nice digs from what I could see.  But that wasn't the main show.  Just before lunch we watched a bird of prey go from one rock out cropping to take flight then return the first place.  Of course as stupid humans are there is always one idiot in every group that has to get as close as possible...and scares this beautiful bird away. 

Of course it always amazes me to see a sign say "Area Closed Seeding in progress"  simple right?  Wrong, must have watched several hundred people disregard the signs and take the short cuts.    We took the Horses Heaven trail on the way down, steep is not the word for this trail it wore both of us out with the grade, very hard on the knees, but we made it.  We watched hawks play on the currents, a falcon chase off a red-tail hawk, and hang gliders, para sails, and some remote control gliders up there.  Views of the bay were unbelievable as well as the natural beauty of everything going on around us.  More than once we would see a bird of prey land not far away from us.

Word of warning, start off early, as fog rolled into SF, the temp was dropping where we were fast.  Bring lunch and a couple of quarts of water per person.  This was a 7.2 mile hike and it took us about 6 hours, you can opt for taking the shorter hike but it is heavily used and up and back is 5.8 miles.

In the third picture above, if you look closely you will see a very large bird of prey on the upper right side of the tree.  We spotted this guy and watched through bino's and he was good sized.  Bird of Prey were everywhere.  GF also saw a flock of turkeys, but they went down a hill before I got a chance to see them.

 

  This is the park with trails just inside Fremont right?  If so, I've watched people on that trail through bino's from the parking lot at one of our customer sites just off Automall.  One time I was glassing the hill, it was maybe 89* where I was sitting, I remember thinking "Their crazy! it must be super hot on that trail"

We used to ride mountain bikes to the top and scream down...

  it's worth every bit of pain....

seen mountain goats up there too.... pretty kool

Thanks....

Plenty of cows up there, but I didn't see any goats.  Yeah this is a winter/early spring climb.  Fog was setting into the bay yesterday and the temp was dropping fast.  People were still going up, as we were coming down and it was 3:00 PM.  Horse Heaven trail is very steep accent/decent less people but not an easy trail.  the northern trail is much easier.  I saw a few mountain bikers up there, they were working hard one way and coasting the other.

Awesome photo's  Thanks !      Brings back memories as a kid  I used to hike there and fish those small cow ponds on the way for bass, bluegill,,,  45+ years ago.