2011 7-14 Mission Peak - Fremont, California

Length: 5.75 miles

Duration:1 Hours 47 minutes

Vertical Up:1969 feet

My track log at EveryTrail




In all the years I have been coming to the Silicon Valley, Mission Peak has always loomed in the distance, begging to be climbed. I’ve seen it with snow on the top, lush green grass and dead brown grass. The summit is usually covered by the low clouds that are so typical here. Over the 20+ years traveling up here, I’ve only managed one attempt to hike this hill. This was back in my inactive days and I failed miserably.

I was up in San Jose on business this week and knew I was going to hike this hill. I even got my boss interested. We decided to go for the hike on a Thursday after work. Well, this meant we got to the parking lot at 7 PM. To our surprise the place was packed. After loosing a prime parking spot to an aggressive driver going the wrong way (must have been from Massachusetts) we followed the long line of cars down the hill a bit and parked on a residential street.

I’ve read a few logs about this hike (like this one) so I knew what to expect. The hike is 6-7 miles round trip and should take 4-5 hours. Since we were starting late, we were sure making the summit was not possible. Now for the hike…

This hike starts out by descending just a bit before beginning a steep initial assent. The first ½- ¾ mile assent was tough on me. I had been up since 4 AM and the combination of an early wake up, full days work and now this hill was really affecting my pace. My boss was very cool and kept encouraging me to keep going (“we’ll rest at this flat section in about 5 minutes’). After ½ hour of hiking, huffing and puffing, I made it to the rest point.

After that the trail is pretty consistent grade up, it follows the terrain of the hill, slowly meandering to the top. The rest did me good and I was able to set a good pace (for me) as we continued up. We passed many people and cows on our way up. It’s a tough hike.









As it approached 8:15, we decided it was too cold for us thin blooded Arizonans and too late to continue. We had no idea how close or far to the summit we were.

So we headed down and made it back to the car in 45 minutes. As it turns out, we only had ½ mile to the summit when we turned around. We probably could have made it if we weren’t so dang cold. It’s winter here!





Total distance of the hike was just under 6 miles and we climbed 1800 feet. Not too shabby for a Thursday evening. Next time, I’m leaving earlier and making it to the top!