The Winter Solstice turned out to be a great night for hiking up Mission Peak around midnight.
For my annual celebration of the Winter Solstice, I decided to do a night hike up one of Fremont's treasures, Mission Peak. Why is the Winter Solstice important? For one thing, it inspired religious traditions such as Christmas (which was celebrated Yule,
So I loaded up my pack with ~35 lbs. of iron weights (good training), and marched to the top. It was very windy when I arrived just past midnight, or 1 hour 10 minutes after I started hiking. Um, I conveniently forgot the park has a curfew of 10:00 p.m.!
This is a silhouette of the lookout pole at the peak, lit by a 3/4 moon. The moon was bright enough that I only had to use my trusty headlamp for just a few minutes over rough terrain during the entire hike.
The lookout pole again, this time lit up by my camera flash. Despite the "real mountain" 50 mph winds at the top, I managed to hunker down for almost 30 minutes to enjoy the view of the city lights below. Oh, and munch on some yummy muffins that Sharon had brought me the day before.
Hiking down was even more enjoyable than going up with all the twinkling lights from Fremont and beyond.
I was done by 1:30 a.m. and hence got to do a nice relaxed cruise back home in the Alfa.
