Mount Umunhum
What I Learned
I have hiked Mt Umunhum before, but from the Bald Mountain Trailhead. This time, Cassie and I hiked Mt Umunhum from the Woods Trail Trailhead, almost doubling the distance of the hike.
While there are a few steep sections of the trail (especially on Barlow Road), the rest was pretty gentle.
The Woods Trail and Barlow Road are double-track fire roads made of packed dirt. The Mt Umunhum Trail is a single-track trail which is also packed dirt.
The entire length of the trail is well-shaded, which was surprising given that not many trails in the Bay Area are.
The Woods Trail Parking lot closes at sunset, and we were not sure if we could make it back in time, so we parked our car on a pull-out on Hicks Rd.
What I Learned
While Cassie was using the restroom at the top of Mount Umunhum, she accidentally dropped her cellphone into the vault toilet. When she informed the rangers, they stated that they would try to ask the restroom cleaning company to find the phone. It’s been a few weeks, and we have not heard back.
What Happened?
16.9 miles, 7 hrs and 2 min, 3020 ft of ascent
For a few years now, I had wanted to hike up to the top of Mt Umunhum from the Woods Trail Trailhead as I felt that hiking from the Bald Mountain Trailhead was cheating since I had driven half the distance up. On this weekend, Cassie and I wanted a challenging hike that would be less than 20 miles, and we settled on Mt Umunhum.
The weather was just perfect for a challenging hike, and all the shade we encountered allowed us to stay relatively cool. This meant that we did not run out of water or feel that this hike was a sufferfest.
We hiked up to the top of Mt. Umunhum in good time, and we hurried back as we wanted to see if we could finish the hike by sunset. As we were hiking back to the parking lot, we saw that the rangers were kicking everyone out of the parking lot with only one car remaining. Unfortunately, we did witness two teenagers throw a plastic bag into the bushes. I’m sitting here regretting not saying something, but they were a few hundred feet ahead of us, and I was tired.
We got back to the car and celebrated our achievement as we felt strong the entire time. We feel like we’re at a good strength level for some of the things we want to do the rest of the year.
