Adventures in Onionism

I spent a day on Mt. Tam climbing up the mountain in creek beds and "running" down it on abandoned firebreaks and overgrown trails. It's not a race so much as friends organizing a group run. I didn't do as well as I'd hoped, missing the very first checkpoint and having to backtrack. It was a hard but fun day. Here's the route. Look at the vert. Here's a photo sphere of the view of the North Bay from near the West Peak summit.

Matt Davis Trail Can't be bothered with trails Sitting in a puddle to cool off Pretty happy with his transportation the last 50 feet to the car. Nice 22-mile Mt. Tamalpais circumnavigation today with Yuch and George. George had some big paw issues at the end (pretty much the only time he's ever had any), so he was hurting and I couldn't bomb down the Matt Davis Trail as I normally would have, but it was still a great day.

This one's for the running nerds. My route : I went over to Marin county today and did a nice 6 hour run on the north side of Mt. Tam on Marin Municipal Water District land. I've hiked and run on Mt. Tam a few times before, but always on the southern/western/Pantoll side. I generally don't like to drive to start a run, but I knew I'd be out long enough today to make it worth it. Traffic through Richmond and over the bridge is generally not that bad, and parking was easy and free, so that's points for Tam over Diablo or anything in the South Bay or on the peninsula. I started at Natalie Greene park above Ross Commons, up Tucker and Indian Rd., down a ridge to Lake Lagunitas, up to Collier springs, on Upper North Side and Benstein to Rock Spring, down the Cataract trail to Alpine Lake, Helen Markt, Kent, Bon Tempe Shadyside, and Fish Gulch back to Phoenix Lake and back to where I started. I liked the area. Not giant trees like in Muir Woods or even the French Trail in...