Briones Regional Park bike ride

For a quick bit of pleasure reading to tide you over until the next time I decide to write, here is a mountain bike ride report from Briones Regional Park two days ago.  You can also view a map and profile of the ride.

The weather was showing a menacing storm cloud hovering off the coast, and general overcast, so this might have been one of the last chances of the season for a good dry ride.  The overcast was keeping it cool, too, which was good since I figured there'd be the usual UP and DOWN of your standard Far East Bay park.

Started from the Lafayette BART station and headed up Happy Valley Road to Panorama Road.  A short but good warmup, this, climbing about 60 meters.

Panorama climbs hard, and then keeps climbing hard as you turn off on Mariposa Trail on the dirt.  I passed the westbound Mariposa turnoff, and opted for straight northbound.  Lots of dry tall yellow grass on both sides, with groves of oak here and there.  Fantastic gorge views toward Layafette ridge to the right, and the trail even narrowed to an obvious ridge at one point.

More serious climbing on Mariposa until it intersected Russell Peak Trail, which continues up to Russell Peak, elevation 413 m (maybe 250 m up from the start of Panorama Road.)  And then it eventually turned into Briones Crest Trail.

Up until now, I'd been generally unhappy with the ups and downs.  It's far from my favorite type of riding.  But I was pleased to find that things generally improved once up past Russell Peak.

(Maybe next time I'll try coming in from Lafayette Ridge Trail, instead, even though the last climb on that up to Briones Crest looks daunting.)

There are a few cattle gates on this route.  One of them, a beefy one just south of the Seaborg/Briones Crest intersection, has a broken hinge.

And there are a few cows, too.  I stopped for a pick-me-up powerbar after the intro climb was over and had a chat with three cows that were sitting under a nearby tree chewing their cud, my partners in preprocessed culinary delights.  They were non-responsive.

Back on and feeling renewed, the ups and downs seemed a little less crazy than before.

Clipping along toward the Crescent Ridge turnoff, I spotted a baby snake in the road ahead, repeating patterns on its back and sides!  I swerved and brought my snake-leg high, avoiding him smartly.  But of course I had to turn around to look. :)

(A week before, we'd had a run-in with a 1 m rattler in Ventana Wilderness between Redwood and Sykes Camps, so I was a little nervous!)

But this time, it was just a gopher snake.  Probably.  I didn't ask for a venom sample.

Overcast skies kept me cool as I arrived at the Briones Crest/Table Top Trail interchange.  I had originally planned to stick to Briones Crest, but I'm a sucker for a view, and Table Top was looking like it had a view.

Good decision!  I cranked up there, and enjoyed a nice relatively-flat ride along this great grass-lined trail, with views of Mount Diablo, Concord airport, the Benicia Bridge, and the Mothball Fleet.  The delta dominated the distant horizon.

Curving back west, I rejoined the Briones Crest Trail and after a small dip, crested at Briones Peak (elevation 552 m.)

From there, it was all downhill to the Maricich Lagoons.  The trail bent and twisted easily down the grassy hill.  I passed a jogger and his pup, the first person I'd seen in the park (save a hiker and her two dogs I'd seen just exiting the park on Panorama Road.)

I got to the bottom of the hill and for once didn't get my map out, thus making the only wrong turn of the day.  (By the time I sorted it out, I didn't feel like going back just to see the water fountain at the north end of the park.)  As such, I didn't see the Maricich Lagoons, but turned northwest to stay on the Briones Crest Trail, instead of transitioning to the Old Briones Road Trail like I'd originally intended.

But I did see the more-impressive Sindicich Lagoons instead!  These were beautiful reed-lined ponds, complete with ducks lazily paddling back and forth, wakes cutting silently over the dark surface of the water.

Up a mild hill to the (other) Lagoon Trail turnoff, I was greeted with more sweeping vistas, this time more northward.  On a clearer day, it might have been even more magnificent, but today I was glad to not have a 1pm sun beating down on my back.

At this point, I decided to depart Briones Crest Trail, and headed down Abrigo Valley Trail to check out the group camps that were down there.  This trail was steep and loose, and included the steepest and loosest terrain I saw, both in the same 20 m stretch of trail!  It looked like maybe a grader had been out there recently.

(In retrospect, I would have stayed on Briones Crest, and then turned south on Santos Trail to get down to the same point, presuming Santos Trail is better... and then I would have had more of a chance to enjoy those Briones Crest views.)

In short order, I was down at the bottom of Abrigo Valley, and came to the Wee-Ta-Chi Camp nestled in a grove of oak.  Filled up my water bottle, and continued down the valley, curving gradually to the left.  Crossed the Abrigo Valley creek, but it was bone-dry.

This is a great little valley, with oak groves and grassy meadows.  The gradual downhill makes it a joy to coast through.

The next group camp was Maud Whalen Camp, where I unfilled some of my water.  (It looked like the bathrooms at Wee-Ta-Chi were locked, but not so at Maud Whalen.)  This camp has a covered firecircle with capacity for probably 30-40 people.

Continuing down the valley, it's a quick downhill 1.5 km to Oak Grove and Newt Hollow picnic areas near the main entrance.

Here I met the second person of my trip, a jogger who was just starting her run.  She asked me how to get to the view, and I gave her the reverse of my route. I wish I knew more, but it's only the first time I've been here!

With names like Oak Grove and Newt Hollow, which would you eat lunch at?  Of course, Newt Hollow.  There was a big grassy area with a flat concrete pad 2 m in diameter in its center... I presume this is newt country?  There were no newts to be found this day, however.

I sat down and ate my peanut butter sandwich lunch, which had been comically flattened in-bag by the heavy-duty bungee-lashing I'd applied.  Oh well.

No one was in the parking booth as I rode by, and headed up to Seaborg Trail, destination: Archery Range.  (I love the name of this trail, by the way.)

Since I'd been thinking about getting back into archery, I wanted to check out what the Bay Area had to offer, which is actually what led me to this park in the first place.  So I pedaled the short distance up Seaborg (!!) to Crescent Ridge Trail, and then to the range.

There was already one gentleman there from the Briones Archery Club, named Carl.  He gave me the complete scoop on everything that had to do with Bay Area and Northern California archery, which was most excellent.

The atmosphere on the archery range is much much different than on the shooting range.  The range itself is nestled in a small oak-lined canyon under Crescent Ridge.  I like it.

From there, it was back to Seaborg, where I intended to have a look at the less-developed Homestead Valley Camp.  But instead I was distracted suddenly by an giant herd of goats coming out of the camp road!

I stopped my bike and got off, having no idea if you could actually spook goats, or what.  They didn't seem scared, but were definitely gravitating toward me. Must have been the tasty-looking brake cables.

Fortunately, before any taste-testing could occur, the two goat-dogs intervened and herded them away to the west.  The shepard (goat-herd?) said hi, and told me I could keep on riding--I guess goats aren't easily spooked after all.

I was so impressed by the skills of the dogs, and by the fact that a few lonely raindrops were starting to fall out of the darkening sky, that I forgot about the Homestead Camp, and just kept heading up the canyon past the broadleaf trees growing out of the seasonal creek next to the road.

Seaborg is an easy trail until the last bit, where it basically shoots straight up the hill.  Ugh.  Very powdery trail, too, but not so much you can't pedal up.

It might be steep, but that part's mercifully short.  And I was back on Briones Crest Trail again, this time heading home.  One final climb up Russell Peak (because once a day just isn't enough, I guess!) and then it was down the crest back to Panorama Road.  The light rain was just enough that I was starting to flip mudflecks into my face (haven't been able find my sunglasses since the Ventana trip) but the firetrail was still solid.

Panorama Road and Happy Valley Road were damp (downhill muddy tires wet asphalt woo), but it was easy from there back to BART and home!

Overall, this is a mighty fine park, I think.  There's a lot of opportunity for a lot of big loops.  I'm even willing to forgive the up-downiness, and that's saying a lot.

I'd rate the ride as moderate exercise, low technical difficulty.  23.6 km.