Bay Area Public Transportation Hike

I've never owned a car. Adam got rid of his car shortly after we moved to our current home. Luckily SF is an excellent city to be carless these days.

Just about the one and only major draw back to lacking a car is hiking. The Bay Area is wonderful for so may reasons, and one of the top o' the list reasons is the fabulous nature surrounding the cities here. Sure, there's Zipcar- and we've definitely used it for hiking- but driving 2 hours round trip for a 4 hour hike just seems... not great. Especially given that I almost always fall asleep right after a hike and leave poor Adam alone and bored behind the wheel. That's why it's always such a treat to find quality hikes entirely reachable via public transportation.

This week's find was a lovely hike up in the Oakland hills. Took the BART to Rockridge and then the 49B bus to Derby St & Claremont Blvd. There's an excellent collection of trails there.

The area is Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve is where we started and Strawberry Creek Canyon is where we ended. In particular we hiked the Stonewall Panoramic Trail & several fire trails.

As we were approaching the peak, we kept hearing these train noises. "Can we actually hear Amtrak from here?" we wondered. No, you can't. What you CAN hear is the super awesome Redwood Valley Railway which just so happened to be open for us on this weekday. For $3 a piece we hopped the train for a delightful ~12 min ride in the FREEZING COLD. We also forgot to stop Strava so when you check out the Strava results the flat ~2m portion in the middle is us hiking off the path, going around the train, and coming back.

Taking out the 2 miles and 30 minutes for the train trip, the hike was ~7.6 miles ~2hr 20min. Felt like a lot longer... because it was FREEZING COLD for most the hike. Be sure to check the weather and BELIEVE the reports before you head out on a hike, folks! End of the hike dropped us at the Berkeley BART.