Today I went out to Tilden Regional Park near Berkeley to hike with a group from the south bay. When I looked at the trail maps of the area earlier this week, I noticed that some of the trails were open to mountain biking. It’s been a while since I’ve ridden my mountain bikes, so I decided to head out early and bike for a bit before meeting up with the group to go hiking.

I parked at Inspiration Point. It’s a nice spot, though I guess I wouldn’t really call it inspirational.

I didn’t know this until I got to the park, but the trails that were open to mountain biking were almost all fire roads. There wasn’t really much singletrack available to bikers. Even though the riding wasn’t all that challenging, I still had a good time on my bike, mostly because the scenery was pretty nice. The trail actually connects with the Bay Area Ridge Trail, so I ended up riding the ridge trail to the south eastern end of the park.

From the ridge you can see out towards the reservoirs in Orinda. (I’m not sure why this horse is blindfolded?)

From looking west from the ridge you can just barely make out the Bay Bridge.

I obviously brought the wrong bike. I saw maybe only 3 or 4 mountain bikers on the fire roads in the park, but I saw literally dozens of road bikers on the paved roads that wind through the park. I think next time I need to do some major hill training before a century ride I’d consider doing it here.

I made it back to my car a bit early, so I ended up doing some more riding on the northern area of the park, overlapping some of the areas that we’d be hiking. The trails out here were pretty nice, running parallel to a creek.

Afterwards I met up with the group at Inspiration Point, and we started our hike. One person was running late, so we caught up with him at the park’s petting zoo. These cows don’t look all that happy with me, probably because I had nothing to feed them.

We passed by a small lake called Jewel Lake which had turtles relaxing on a log.

The hike took us to Wildcat Peak. At the top of the peak is a small lookout area called the Peace Grove.

The group admiring the view from the Peace Grove. I had met most of them for the first time today. They seem like a cool group of people, and I’m always happy to find people to hike with.

The view from the Peace Grove was quite nice. You can see both the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges from here. I wish I had brought my SLR and my polarizing filter, it would’ve been able to cut some of the haze on the horizon so you could make out the bridges a bit better.

Tilden park was quite nice. There were quite a lot of people there, hiking, biking, walking their dogs, feeding cows, and even selling lemonade. I was quite impressed with the park, I’d definitely come back.