city park by the same name. I have been to the park dozens of times
over the years but somehow missed a visit to this feature. The maintained trails
all avoid it but there is a use trail that nicely reaches it without the need
for bushwhacking or tangling with poison oak, abundant in the park. On
Fridays when I'm home I typically join Steve and Tom for a picnic lunch hike
which is a thinly veiled excuse to drink in public places. Having described
this in some detail previously, I'll not go
into specifics on that. I found
a GPX track
on peakbagger.com that made about 5mi while tagging Alum Rock and Eagle Rock
in a loop. It would do nicely. There had been a series of pretty strong storms
roll through the state like we haven't seen in some years, and this was the
first day of blue skies since the deluge had begun more than a week earlier.
Penitencia Creek,
normally a tiny stream of clear water in wintertime, was
a roiling tempest of brown, muddy water and still only a fraction of when it
had peaked during the storms. The creek had overflowed its banks, muddying
trails and parklands, causing some minor landslides that
closed portions of the
trail system but otherwise looked to have caused no major damage. Our tour
eventually took us across the creek to the north side where it was sunnier and
the trails drier. We followed the North Rim Trail which, despite its name,
doesn't actually follow along the rim which is more than a thousand
feet higher, but it does provide a nice overlook of the park.
Just past the junction with the Eagle Rock Trail, the N. Rim Trail skirts above
Alum Rock on the north side. A use trail drops down 
a grassy slope from
the main trail to 
the base of the rock formation. Some easy
class 3 scrambling gets one to the summit with about 20ft of prominence.
Steve joined me at the summit but Tom decided 
the halfway point
was good enough. It was a bit windy
and chilly at the top but the halway point, sunnier and protected from the
wind, made a better picnic site. In 
usual fashion,
we drank the two bottles of
wine first before partaking of the other picnic goods which included various
cheeses, fruit, bread and hummus. Mmm. Afterwards, we packed up and headed back,
first making a detour to visit 
Eagle Rock, 
overlooking the
Santa Clara Valley
(which would also make a good picnic site). Not a bad way to spend a Friday...