Mount Diablo

Mount Diablo, at 3849 feet, might not be the tallest mount in the San Francisco Bay Area, but it is the tallest one you can drive to the summit of, and, more importantly, it has the highest prominence, meaning there aren’t any other tall features around, and thus the view from the top is unobstructed. It is said that you can see parts of 40 of California’s 58 counties.

For a dozen years I had the idea of going to Mount Diablo’s summit on a clear day right after a storm to experience the expansive views with the best visibility, but never came with a concrete plan until now, when everything seemed to line up perfectly: lots of rain in the forecast until Tuesday night, clearing winds the following day, and a blank calendar ahead (the latter, admittedly, not a rare occurrence). So I made a reservation for a site in the campground that’s just two miles before the summit, and, come Wednesday afternoon, off we went.

Finding the park’s gate closed when we arrived to the entrance around 5pm caused an initial shock of severe disappointment. I got off to talk to the ranger who was letting some cars out, and before I could say anything he fired “you are the guy who has the reservation?”. I answered with a hesitant “y-yes”, not wanting the spotlight on me, but it was shining bright as the sun and focused as a laser straight to the only person who thought it was such a good idea to come to the park during a heavy storm that he rushed to make a reservation to secure a spot.

 “Do you like to camp in the snow?”

 “Yes!” I tried to be emphatic because I really wanted that gate open for us, but I’m not sure I succeeded as I answered while still processing the unexpected question and containing myself not to ask how much snow we were talking about. 

“You have 4WD?”. That was a much easier “yes”, as it was based on pure, objective facts.

“Well, I guess you know what you’re doing”, he said and let us in. “You can camp anywhere you want”.

We drove to the campground only to find the access closed with traffic cones, but with the entitlement of the freedom just bestowed upon us by the authority, we temporarily removed one cone and drove in. Relieved to see just inches and not feet of snow, we picked what looked like the best site, only to realize that it was exactly the one we had reserved.

We slept cozy and warm, and woke up at dawn to a bit of fresh snow and a wonderful, clear but very cold morning. We intended to drive the remaining two miles to the summit to prepare breakfast at the top, but the road was closed (in a much more unassailable manner than with mere cones), so we parked at a vista point and enjoyed breakfast in the van with the expectedly amazing view. We could see ourselves almost surrounded by a semi-circle of water, from the South San Francisco Bay to the Sacramento Delta. We could see the Golden Gate Bridge, the Pacific Ocean, and even the Farallon Islands.

At around 8am a ranger approached us to ask what the heck we were doing there, but his tone softened when we told him another ranger allowed us to stay overnight. He then informed us we were trapped because the road down was closed due to ice, but we had no hurry and would happily wait for the ice to thaw.

A couple hours later the road clearly reopened because cars started coming in hordes. Until then we had had the entirety of Mount Diablo State Park to ourselves. We hiked to the summit and when we came back it was pure chaos, with a long line of cars waiting on the road for a parking space, and other cars parked wherever they could. It was the middle of the week but it was a splendid sunny day after a long week of bad weather, and Mount Diablo offered the closest snow to several million people who very rarely have it in their backyard.

The only missing thing from this post about the spectacular views from Mount Diablo’s summit is, well, views from Mount Diablo’s summit. You see, the ranger wasn’t entirely correct when he assumed we knew what we were doing, because I slipped on the icy asphalt. My elbow and my camera got the worst part against the pavement, and remained non-functional for a little while. Both have recovered by themselves, of which I’m grateful, but puzzled — I had never heard of a self-healing camera.