Mission Peak – A Great Hike

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It was a Perfect day on Saturday, Feb 24. 8 of KVites ventured to conquer the much vaunted Mission Peak in Fremont. There were supposed to be more but they backed out under various pretexts. :-).

Nilesh, Nitul, Paresh, Bijal, Samir car-pooled and arrived well before 8am. Prashant and Komal came just before 8am. This meant that the hike actually started before the scheduled time (8am) which was very surprising. Nirav Gala came a tad late and had to run a bit to catch up leaving him panting.

Due to the rains the hills were all green and cows were grazing peacefully. As someone pointed out it looked like a scene from a Yash Chopra film in Switzerland. The beautiful houses around added to the English countryside look. These same hills may not look as beautiful in Summer when the grass dries up. So Winter + Spring seems like a good time to do this hike.

We walked briskly at the beginning and began to chat about various things like we usually do. Gradually the trail became a bit steeper and our pace slowed down. But the view of the Bay Area from the hills and the general greenery around was so great that we did not feel any fatigue. There are benches along the way (we counted 4) and these can be taken as milestones in your hike upwards (first bench, second bench, etc).

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Initially we were wearing jackets but as we walked and generated heat the jackets start to come off. There are quite a few shortcut trails which are steeper than the regular trial but they are fun to do. We reached almost the peak in about 1 hour and 45 mins. We must have been about 15 mins away from the actual peak. But we decided to leave that for another day. We setup camp, put our flag and opened the nashta boxes. There was Godpapdi and biscuits and poptarts. It was windy at the top and jackets had to be put back on.

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We started the climb down and reached back to base in about 1 hour. So the total hike took about 2.45 hours but it could have been possible to do it in 2.15 to 2.30 hours also.

I think everyone liked the Hike and there was enthusiasm to do more of these. In fact there was even talk of starting earlier (7.30am?) so that folks can be back at home and spend time with the kids. So maybe we can start an informal Hikers club and go hiking more often. Our next Hike could be a place where the Kids also can be taken along. If any suggestions for a good hiking place, let everyone know.

Legs did hurt for 24 hours after the hike but the amazing weather and the nice hike more than covered for it. Mission-1 Accomplished. Now looking forward for other missions. 😉

You can view the photos album here.

Update:

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5 Females undertook MissionPeak-2 on Mar 17. Their photos are in the same set as the above link.