Ohlone Wilderness Trail

Date: January 17th, 2026

This spring has been relatively dry (until the storms in mid-February), and all of January had fantastic weather for being outdoors: partly cloudy/sunny with the relatively cool winter air. The hills in the bay were green from the rains at the end of December, and I was looking for some hiking to do. I didn’t really want to backpack since I didn’t want to take up an entire weekend, and realized this was a good time to try to hike the Ohlone Wilderness trail in a day. It was sort of spontaneous; I saw some posts about people doing this online and decided why not. I’ve wanted to hike this trail for awhile now and the conditions were right.

I hiked from Lake Del Valle to Mission Peak; it would be easier to get back home from the Mission Peak side and I wanted to get the larger climb up to Rose peak done first. The night before I just threw in a random assortment of bars, trail mix, and dried mangoes for fuel, and carried in 4L of water with three electrolyte packs along with a filter. In hindsight I didn’t need to carry that much water at a time; there were plenty of water sources along the way but I just wanted to be prepared.

I had my dad drop me off at the start at Lake Del Valle around 7:15 AM, right after they officially opened at 7 AM during this time of the year. A group of trail runners were starting at the same time but were just running up to Rose Peak and back, and I hiked/jogged with them for half a mile before they took off. I wanted to make sure I paced myself so that I could make it all the way to the end. I got to the top of Rose Peak around 10:40 AM and sat down to eat some snacks. To my surprise, another group of trail runners were coming up to the peak, and among the group were a couple of coworkers that I had run with before! They were doing the same trail and had started a little later than me. I decided to run with them on the downhills, and keep up for as long as I could. It’s always nice to have some company to motivate me to go faster.

We jogged the downhills and hiked up the uphills while we chatted for a bit. The scenery before  Rose Peak was nice but nothing new to me; the East Bay hills always have that familiar look to them especially after hiking around here so often. However, the rolling green hills on the Sunol side of Rose Peak were incredibly lush, and there was one part where the trail became less distinct and went through an open field that felt like I was in a video game.

The “downhill” to Sunol and Little Yosemite had more uphill in it than I expected, and we were constantly changing from running to hiking. I eventually continued on past the trail runners as they stopped to refill their water. I kept on until just before reaching the Sunol valley where I got about another liter of water for the upcoming climb to Mission Peak. I didn’t stop for long in Sunol as I was already behind my schedule of reaching Mission Peak. I planned on meeting my friends at the top and descending down with them. I booked it up as fast as I could and passed a group of kids on a backpacking trip, some of them carrying a comical amount of cooking gear. I started getting a bit of a cramp less than a mile from the peak, but drinking some more electrolytes and eating a bar staved that off.

I reached the top of Mission Peak around 3:15 feeling pretty good except for sore feet and descended down to Fremont with my friends.