On the afternoon of Sunday, February 2nd 1997, the East Bay
Barefoot Hikers met for a barefoot hike along the Stage Road and
Mount Diablo trails.
Fifteen people took part including myself, my son Gareth (13),
Teresa, Dan, Peter and his wife Sandy, Joannie and her husband
Bruce, young Phoebe (11), Eric (13), Nicole (11), Denise, Fred,
Darren and Phoebe. Also, Sam the dog.
I played barefoot taxi on this day. Gareth and I shuttled around
town picking up Fred and the rest of the kids. A fair crowd had
shown up on this sunny, mild day. We decided to take a group
picture before we started (see the web page address below).
Joannies husband Bruce had shown up shod (he did that once
before). I don't like this and I've made it clear that people
have to start the hike barefoot. In this case, I ribbed him a bit
but decided not to make an issue of it. "I might take them
off later" he said. Yes, there are some pretty deep streams
up ahead, I thought.
We set off and immediately encountered some fairly deep mud, well
churned by horse traffic. This was fun for a while, but it became
rather slow going. We got through that fairly quickly and our
multi-hued feet took us up the smoother trail that followed (2nd
and 3rd photo on web site). Just before the dry flood-control
dam, Nicole decided to climb atop a really large boulder. She
soon had a lot of company as five or six people joined her (4th
photo).
There is a stream that repeatedly crosses the trail. After the
rains we've had. it was running just under knee-deep. Bruce took
off the shoes.
We chatted as we strolled along enjoying the scenery (trees,
rushing water, the "castle-crags" shining in the sun
high above us) and textures (mud, deep mud, gritty sections,
leaves, soft sandstone, mud). Most of us are regulars and we know
each other pretty well by now. We stopped for food.
This is usually an out-and-back hike. Peter and I examined the
map and decided to try for a circular route. We headed up the
Mount Diablo trail. We passed through an extremely verdant
section (reminded some of Hawaii) with water cascading down
between moss covered rocks (see 5th photo). This took us to a
series of high, grassy meadows. Very picturesque. Unfortunately,
the ground underfoot was turning more and more
"ungulated". Barefoot hikers do not like this
condition. It happens when a lot of very large, cloven hoofed
beasts have been walking along very winter-rain softened trails.
This leaves a series of deep pits everywhere, with the in-between
bits dried off to hard, mud "pinnacles". It looks sort
of like a swiss cheese with little spikes sticking up. This isn't
too bad if it isn't unrelenting. However, I could see that we
weren't making good enough time to do this hike as a loop. Peter
scouted ahead to the next trail and reported "no
change". We decided to head back the way we came. No matter,
it was a very pleasant walk back. Oh, and Bruce stayed barefoot
the whole way after that first stream crossing (four-fifths of
the hike). You can see him carrying his shoes in the 6th photo.
After we dropped Fred off at his house, I took the kids to 7/11
for them to get drinks, On the way in, a little kid saw the five
of us and said to his mother "Look Mom, they have no shoes
and socks !!".
As mentioned above, Peter had his digital camera along on the
hike. He put six photos up on a web page.
Take a look at:
http://www.ccnet.com/~pgnomes/page10.html