Mount Diablo summit
- Food
- A picnic, or a taco in Danville afterward
- Sports
- Oakland Roots, if you want a club on the way
Crowd level: Easy. Busy only at the obvious hour
Best season Clear days in fall and spring. Summer is hot and often hazy. Winter can be sharp and empty, which is wonderful if the road is open.
Drive 1 hr 15 min
From downtown San Francisco, about 75 minutes in calm traffic. The last stretch up the mountain is slow and winding. Fog on the bay can mean sun on the summit, or the reverse.
Parking. There is an entrance fee and a summit lot that fills on clear weekends. Go early. The summit is exposed. A jacket is not optional just because the city was warm.
On a clear day the summit is a survey point with a ridiculous view: the Sierra one way, the Farallones the other, if the air agrees. In summer it is hot, bright, and windy. Bring water. Leave the Bay Bridge postcard to someone else.
The short version
Mount Diablo’s base and meridian was the reference for huge parts of California and Nevada land surveys. The name is the Spanish one. Indigenous peoples of the region held the mountain long before that grid. The view is the trick. The history is the grid you cannot see.
Food nearby
A picnic, or a taco in Danville afterward
Pack water and food. There is no serious meal at the top. Afterward, a taco in Danville’s old town is enough. Do not detour to a mall food court and call it the day.
A game nearby
Oakland Roots, if you want a club on the way
Oakland Roots play in the USL, a second-tier league, and are the East Bay club that fits this desk. A college game at a local campus is the other option. The NFL is not the point of a summit.
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