Sunrise Hike to Mission Peak, originally uploaded by dmzajac2004-.

Copyright © 2010 Deborah M. Zajac. All Rights Reserved.

Big Baby Boy, Anne a photography friend, and myself met to hike Mission Peak for a sunrise, and to help get Anne ready for an upcoming 10k run she’s doing.
It took me 2 hours and 5-6 minutes to make it the peak. Both Big Baby Boy, and Anne are in excellent shape. Neither of them huffed or puffed the whole way up. I on the other hand took lots of breaks, and huffed, and puffed like a steam engine! They both beat me to the summit by 10 minutes.
The climb- The trail starts at 500ft and the top is at 2,517ft. A 2,100 foot ascent. It was according to Anne’s GPS 3.06 miles from bottom to the top. Pretty STEEP!
The trail traverses rocky loose soil, rutted, dusty, and very little tree coverage going up the Steep Route. It’s a fire road that is nothing but switch-backs all the way up. There are only 2 flatish little breaks the entire way up, you may run into cows that roam freely through the park on or near the trail, and open areas can have strong winds, and gusts. Today the weather was nice going up. Hardly any wind, but once up at the top it was breezy and cold.
The fog started to roll in too so we moved quickly taking our photos around the Marker pole.

Then I took photos of the sunrise. After our descent we stopped at a local coffee house- not the big chain. We had a well deserved breakfast.
Big Baby Boy came home for the Holidays last Tuesday night since then he and I have hiked up the Steep Road twice, and gone to the track twice, and this morning hiked Mission Peak. Tomorrow I’m sure we’ll hit the track to stretch our legs, but I doubt I’ll be adding the bleachers to my routine tomorrow.
I’m sure hiking up to Mission Peak was something he never thought he’d do. I’m very glad he went with me. He did say it was worth getting up at 3:50am for, but nothing he would do on his own.

Total hike 6.12 miles
Nikon D300s| Nikkor 18-200mm VRI @ 18mm| f3.5| 1/6second| ISO 400 | Manual Mode| On a Tripod