Sep 4-7, 2015: Ohlone Wilderness Trail Backpacking Trip
Adult Coordinator: Mr. Dickinson
Scout Leader: Dominic Thibault
Date: September 4-7, 2015
Where? Ohlone Wilderness Trail.
Meet: Foster City Library, 4.30pm Friday September 4
What to Bring: Backpacking gear (see equipment list here)
Description: Venture Patrol event, open to scouts with backpacking experience.
Walking the whole of the 27 mile Ohlone Wilderness Trail over 3 days and 3 nights; starting in Fremont on Friday evening and ending with brunch at Lake Del Valle on Monday.
Try out your lightweight gear, try out some new backpacking recipes and polish up your backpacking skills.
This is not a loop hike so we’ll need drivers to drop us off on Friday and pick us up on Monday; contact Dominic Thibault if you can help.
This was a fairly strenuous hike, with over 8,000′ of total climbing over the 28-ish miles hiked. That amounted to about 2,000′ of climb on Friday and Saturday (each), plus almost 4,300 feet in climb on Sunday! Monday’s hike was still strenuous, as our steep downhill hike was nearly 2,000 feet down in just over 2 miles of hiking.
The weather was very warm (over 80°F during the days), and water was scarce in a few places along the trail. We were not able to refill our water bottles on Sunday morning, which was a cause for concern. We had nearly 14 miles to hike that day, and word was that water availability was “intermittent” or dry. We even filtered water from a very… questionable… cow pond, just in case. Fortunately, one of the locations along the way had not yet gone dry and we were able to filter much cleaner water there.
We bypassed Mission Peak (2516′) itself (by about 80′), but did crest the much higher Rose Peak (3817′) during our mega-hike on Sunday. Check the FaceBook group for pictures.
— Mr. Breen