OUTDOORS & ADVENTURE | NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Mount Diablo: Misty history, terrific Northern California views
Folklore surrounds the Northern California peak, a hiker's dream.
Mt. Diablo is a mountain riddled with myths. Which is to say that much of what has been said about this Northern California peak is false.
The biggest and most repeated falsehood is that from its 3,849-foot summit visitors can see more of the Earth's surface than from any other high point except Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa.
You don't have to be a geography nut to know that Alaska's Mt. McKinley or any of Colorado's mighty peaks easily top that claim.
Visitors have also spread another tall tale that Mt. Diablo — it means Devil — was named by Spanish explorers who found a dead priest staked to the summit. The truth is that Spanish soldiers named it "Monte del Diablo" or "Devil's Thicket" because they thought the Native Americans who deemed the mountain sacred evaded capture with the help of evil spirits.
Park rangers theorize that this is what happens when people love a place but can't find the words to describe that special appeal. They exaggerate. They embellish. They make a mountain out of a molehill.
So off I went to Mt. Diablo State Park, 30 miles east of San Francisco, near Danville, on a warm February morning to experience this indescribable appeal.
A two-day storm had just ripped through the Bay Area, and gray clouds darkened the mostly blue skies. The paved road to the summit was closed because of icy conditions, so I threw on my backpack and began my march to the top, following a marked, single-track trail outlined on my park map.
At the trail head — elevation 3,000 feet — lush green plants covered the still-damp ground, beneath towering oaks and Gray Pines. But the summit, only two miles away, was a vision in white. Frost coated everything, including the radio towers on the peak. The difference in climate between the start of the trail and the summit couldn't have been more dramatic.
At the crest of the first hill, the undisturbed snow that covered the trail showed I was the first to venture up the path since the storm. Ice coated the pine needles, turning the branches into crystal chandeliers that tinkled with every passing gust. Near the peak, the snow was light and fluffy.
A few hundred feet from the summit, the trail cut through a frosted thicket of pine and scrub oaks that formed a tight canopy, like a white tunnel, framed by green rolling grasslands and oak forests in the distance.
At the top, clouds swirled around the peak. Only when they broke briefly did I see the famed view: San Francisco's skyscrapers and the Golden Gate Bridge to the west, the flat Diablo Valley to the east and the San Joaquin Valley in the distance.
The view was nice, but the journey to the top was the real prize. And there was more to come.
Ranger Jack Duggan later told me that Mt. Diablo held a special place in the lives of the Bay Miwok Indians, who believed Coyote, the trickster god, created their people on that mountain.
"So this is their Garden of Eden, the center of their world," he said.
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