Black Mountain Day Hike (August 2002)

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These pictures are from a weekend day hike Holly and I took in mid August of 2002 up Black Mountain. Black Mountain is a 2,800 foot high mountain, part of the foothills of the Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve. On the Rancho San Antonio trail map, you can follow our path; we entered from the Rhus Ridge trailhead on the northwest side of the map, and followed the Black Mountain trail up to the summit at Monte Bello Road.

The total trip length was 9.8 miles (4.9 miles each way) with a total elevation change of about 2,400 feet (from about 400 feet to about 2,800 feet). We did the hike at something like a 1.5 mph pace uphill, stopping to rest a couple times. Downhill, we were running late so we went much faster. When we did this hike again a couple weeks later, we did a 2.5 mph pace uphill and 3 mph pace downhill. Both times it was pretty warm; Rancho San Antonio is generally hot and dry during the summer and there are only a few forested areas along the trail.

Before our hike, we went and had tea at Tea Time in Palo Alto, something we do most weekends.

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Andrew drinking tea	Holly drinking tea	Holly looking happy	A view from about 1/4 mile up the Rhus Ridge trail

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This is what the Black Mountain hillsides mainly look like	A view of the Bay Area from a vista point about 1/2 mile up	Here is a view of the summit we were headed towards, from a resting point we stopped at	Andrew sitting for a while (this was about 4/5 of the way up)

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A view of the hillside from our resting point	Andrew looking wind-blown	Holly sitting among some yellow grass	Another view of Holly

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Trees in various stage of summer drying dot the hillside	Andrew again	The view back down the trail from our resting point	The view up towards the summit from our resting point

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Holly standing at the the Black Mountain summit, just past Monte Bello Road	Holly walking towards the rocky formations at the summit	Holly climbing the rocks	Resting and taking in the summit view

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The rocks at the summit were somewhat odd, rough, and out of place	The view to the west from the Black Mountain summit	A big cluster of ugly cell towers adorns the summit to the east	Closeup view of Andrew with the cell towers on the left

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Holly stopping at the vista point on the way downhill	Zoom out of the previous shot to give an idea of scale

Andrew Ho (andrew@zeuscat.com)