DISTANCE: 14.81 km / 9.2 miles
ELEVATION GAIN: 796m / 2611’
TIME TAKEN: 5:08
EBMUD EAST BAY WATERSHED
CLAREMONT CANYON REGIONAL PRESERVE
CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CA
ALAMEDA COUNTY, CA
SOUNDTRACK: Electric Wizard: Barbarian
SUMMITS:
• Barberry Peak: 2709m / 1683’
• Eureka Peak: 2639m / 1640’
Barberry and Eurkea are two little summits in the East Bay hills. Eureka is barely on private property, and I have never attempted to reach it, even though I have hiked close by several times over the past few years. Barberry Peak, a feature which I didn’t even know had a name until last year, is a publicly accessible ridgepoint overlooking the east side of the Caldecott Tunnel entrance. They were both on my “East Bay Hills Obscure Peaks To-Do List,” and both would be visited today.
The weekend was here, which means nothing to me, of course, unemployed for almost a year now, but my brother Alex still has a job, and he has weekends off. So as usual, I hit him up to see if he wanted to hike. He also gets the choice of where we go, because his time is much more precious than mine. He had the idea that we would do a warmup hike for our trip to Death Valley, coming the following weekend, so at Big Al’s suggestion, we were at the De La Veaga trailhead in Orinda, to do a repeat, or at least some approximation, of my old “Orinda To Oakland” hike: not carless this time, no use of dirty dog BART. Fearing I would be late for the meetup time, and fighting a hangover from drinking alone at home last night (where else?) I jumped in the van and rocketed myself through the Caldecott Tunnel, to the trailhead. I actually got there first, but Alex was only seconds behind me, and he had to come all the way from San Francisco. We tried to approximate the weight of the backpacking load we would be carrying in Death Valley, Alex with his large pack at 25 pounds, and me with my daypack, stuffed with as much extra weight as I could find, including junk from the back of my van, which got it up to 22 pounds. I followed proper protocol, and singed in at the trailhead with my EBMUD permit number, and we were off, on what has become one of my most familiar trails.
We were soon lost in conversation, and before I knew it, there was a fire road off to the right, and I said “how would you feel about a mild trespass to an obscure East Bay peak?” He was game, and we veered off, contouring along the hillside cow trails, to be away from the view of the house that was right there by the peak, even though we weren’t even trespassing yet. Around this time, we saw three coyotes in the valley below. Cool! We came around the west side of the hill to remain out of sight, and then went straight up. Then, at the top of the climb, where there was a fence delineating the private property of Eureka Peak, there was one more coyote! Less than 15 feet past the barbed wire fence, and we were on Eureka. A good view of Mount Diablo and Vollmer Peak nearby. Then we went straight down through the fields to rejoin the De La Veaga Trail below, which carried us up the west side of Siesta Valley, into Oakland, and back to civilization, as we heard the roar of cars on Grizzly Peak Boulevard.
Erupting now into daylight now, out of the tranquil Eucalyptus and Bay Laurel groves, we crossed GPB, dodging both motorists and cyclists, and went into the muddy trails of Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve. Not too long after this is my favorite part of the Orinda To Oakland hike, where you come around the bend and the whole of Oakland, San Francisco and The Bay is revealed before you! Magical every time. At this point, there were now quite a bit of people about, coming up from Berkeley, from the west, to enjoy the weekend afternoon. We didn’t feel the need to go all the way down to the bottom of the Berkeley side, because we were not planning on using BART. So we turned around, and headed back the way we came. Back across GPB, and then at the four-way trail intersection, I said to Alex, “how about we go check out Barberry Peak?” And that was it, off to the next quest.
A short jaunt down the Bay Ridge Trail, and we got to the unofficial track that leads up to Barberry. There was a picnic table there, so we sat down and had a quick snack. Then up the hill. The use trail continued all the way to the top, with classy switchbacks and everything. The peak had some rocky bits, and an open view of the surrounding area, especially down to the 24 freeway cut. Urban hiking at it’s finest. We decided to make things interesting, yet again, by not returning the way we came, but by looking for a way down the ridgeline towards the California Shakespeare Theater. The idea seemed bunk at first, a potential total bushwhack, but then just like magic, a faint trail appeared that carried us almost all the way down to the bottom of the ridge, where it magically disappeared again with no evident destination, and we had to slide down a steep, slippery hillside, plough through a tangle of brush, and we were finally delivered down at the Cal Shakes Theater.
The facility was officially closed due to Covid (obviously), but the theater was still physically open (no doors), so we went inside and had a look. From there, we decided to take the most direct way possible back to the trailhead, traveling N/NE over two fences, through the EBMUD watershed and cow fields, where we soon found another old trail that led us through a gap in the ridge, back to the more robust system of cow and farm roads on the other side, which funneled us finally back into the De La Veaga Trail. From that point, we were down to the cars on the Orinda side in a matter of minutes. It ended up being a wild variation on the Orinda To Oakland Hike, but highly successful in researching the obscure peaks of the East Bay hills.
FURTHER READING
Oakland Geology: Some science on Barberry Peak and surroundings
Bob Burd: Bob handles Eureka Peak and many others
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