ride this Sunday the 30th in Union City / Fremont

[jobob]

OK, this was a no-go (as in, no one wanted to go! ). Maybe some other time. Lee and I are off to Mt. Hamilton.

- Jo.

[Veronica]

I wish I had seen this earlier. Did you do Hamiliton from the San Jose side or from Livermore? Riding from the Livermore side was in our thoughts, but we did Morgan Territory from our house instead. Always nice when you can just wheel out your door and ride,

V.

[Trek420]

I wish I'd gotten the bike rack fixed yesterday instead of doing that today. Sorry everyone snowbound we had the most wonderful weather today.

[jobob]

Mt. Hamilton was a sort of a spur-of-the-moment idea. We ran into Anne (from the Rivendell ride up Diablo) at Bicycle Outfitter's yesterday, and we mentioned to her we'd ridden up Diablo 3 times since then. She asked if we'd tried Hamilton yet, and she told us she felt Hamilton was easier than Diablo in many respects & that it's a great ride & we had to try it.

Since people were bailing out of the Union City ride left & right last night we started thinking maybe we'd give Hamilton a go today, since the weather was looking great, and how long can you count on great weather this time of year, I ask?

So, once it started becoming apparent this morning that the last 'maybe' was not going to show up, we packed up the car & headed on out ! Unfortunately we got off to a very late start, but we figured we'd go as far as we were comfortable, and if it started getting too late we'd simply turn back and try again some other time.

We started out from San Jose - we parked at Linda Vista school which is just off of Alum Rock Ave on Kirk Ave. It's about a mile to the start of Mt. Hamilton Road, and we simply followed that. According to a route sheet I dug up on my club's website, it would be about 20 miles from the school to the summit, with ~ 4900 total ft of climing (over the entire 40 mile up & back.) Since it was after 11 am when we started out, we figured we'd turn around at about 2:30-ish so we wouldn't be descending late in the afternoon; we assumed it would get dark very quickly since a good portion of the ride was with the mountain to the west of us. And it's a good excuse if we wanted to wimp out

I read someplace that the grade never exceeds 7% on Mt. Hamilton Road because it was built to accomodate the transport of heavy equipment for the Lick Observatory by horse-drawn wagons. Works for me! It certainly was not as steep as most of Diablo. That said, the climbing went on and on and on....but boy was it gorgeous up there!

After about 6 miles of mostly uninterrupted climbing we turned a bend, and there it was, our destination - Lick Observatory. In theory it was only about 14 miles away. Seemed much farther. Soon after that we encountered a nice long downhill grade - yee hah! - and next thing we knew we were at the entrance to Grant Ranch Park at about mile 9. We took a break there and refilled our water bottles. There's a parking lot there; this would be a good place to start if you want a shorter ride to the summit.

Back on the road again, up, up, up. Like I said it's not as steep as much of Diablo, but distance wise it's twice as long to the summit as Diablo (at least where we started), so it's a toss, difficulty-wise. Some may prefer one over the other. I think I prefer this. I was really enjoying this ride, the grade wasn't too tiring for me, but Lee was starting to look less the happy camper as the miles wore on. We encountered another nice long downhill section, which in theory is great but then you realize that you'll have to slog up it on the way back. We reached the bottom and made a sharp left onto a small bridge over Smith Creek, passing a sign that said "Mt. Hamilton 7 miles". It was only 1:30, and in theory we could have made it to the summit by 2:30 or so, but Lee really didn't seem enthused over the concept, so we decided to turn around at that point. So, we made it roughtly two-thirds of the way up.

We had those two uphill sections on the way back down, but the descents themselves were great fun - since the grade was never very steep, there were never those 'white knuckles on the brakes' moments I would get going down a particularly steep section of road. And the road was in remarkably good condition, a little bumpy in parts, a bit of gravel here & there, but not too shabby. There were a lot of tight turns, but it was easy to ease on the brakes and slow down enough to make them managable. And luckily we had hardly any cars coming up behind us. And did I mention the scenery was gorgeous?

All in all, a great ride. To quote the Governator, "we'll be back" *
(*see below)

[jobob]

Probably next Sunday (Feb. 6), weather permitting.

We'll leave from Linda Vista School (directions here) at 9:30. If for some reason we cannot park there, I see people also park at the intersection of Alum Rock Ave. and Mt. Hamilton Road. You miss out on a mile of climbing that way - hmmm, maybe we'll park there instead!

If you want to join us, great, be there by 9:30. Or, if you're in decent shape, leave later, you're bound to catch up to us!

We'll do our "pokey climbing" routine, lots of short stops, a couple of longer ones for snacks & such, hang out a bit at the Observatory, & head on back down.

- Jo.

[aka_kim]

Thank you for the most excellent write-up Jobob . Hamilton is a ride I've wanted to do for quite awhile, so... weather permitting, health permitting, etc., etc., I just might show up at 9:30 next Sunday.

aka_kim