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Hiking Flag Hill, part 2
Mar. 19th, 2024 10:32 amMy climb to the top of Flag Hill on Saturday was a lot slower than I expected... or at least it felt a lot slower than I expected. I was struggling with breathing as I found out I was not really over a 4+ week old cold like I thought I was. But I made the summit in one hour 45 minutes, which was only a bit slower than the 1 hour 30 minute expectation I set at the bottom of the hill before I realized I was still dealing with the trailing symptoms of an upper respiratory infection.
The views on the way up are beautiful, as I showed in journal part 1 of this hike. The view from the top is extra good. From up here you get a 360° view. The photo above shows the view south, across the main part of the Sunol Wilderness park, to Calaveras Reservoir in the distance. The trailhead we started at is in that developed area down in the valley. ..."Developed" meaning you can see the blacktop of the park road and a few parking lots full of cars.
I'm not sure where Flag Hill gets its name. Maybe somebody planted a flag up here years ago? Maybe there was a person named Flag? One odd thing is as visible as Flag Hill is, it's not even the tallest peak around. There are literally higher peaks in ridges on three sides of it.
Most of the pictures I've shared so far I made with a relatively wide-angle lens. The photo above I made with my "bird shooter" telephoto lens. I carried the bulk and weight of that lens in my bag, wheezing up the steep hill with it, because I thought I might be able to get some great bird pictures. Indeed, while there were a number of birds around, not just song birds but also a couple of falcons, a few red tail hawks, and countless turkey vultures, they never remained still enough for me to attach the lens and capture a good pictures. So at the top of the mountain I decided I might as well use the telephoto lens for something. Why not these lovebirds? 😂
BTW these pictures are literally "Photoshopped", in that I edited all of them with Adobe Photoshop. But per my recent journal about Fake or not? they're not "Photoshopped" in the sense of being fake. I used Photoshop to balance shadows and highlights, adjust color balance, and apply sharpening. Nothing about the content has been changed— nothing moved, added, or removed; nobody made to look taller, slimmer, or curvier, etc.
Getting back to the thread of "I carried this heavy lens all the way up the mountain, I might as well use it," I had fun with distance shots such as the one with the triangular peak, above.
Oddly this peak is unnamed, even on the park map. Heck, there isn't even a formal trail to it. The handful of people you can see in the photo just cross-countried it along the ridgeline. From where I'm standing the trail bends sharply to the right and loops around the east side of Flag Hill. It's a longer, less steep way down than up. Hmm, maybe we should go up that way one of these times.
After we got home I wondered just how long it's been since our last visit to Flag Hill. I mean, I know we've done this hike at least 4 times, maybe more, over the course of many years. Sometimes we've gone later in the season and it is hot out here. Hot and brown. This is a great time of year when the air is pleasantly cool— but not cold— and the hills are swathed in emerald green. It turns out our last visit here, in January 2022, was similar. Well, two years later has been a great time to visit again.
The views on the way up are beautiful, as I showed in journal part 1 of this hike. The view from the top is extra good. From up here you get a 360° view. The photo above shows the view south, across the main part of the Sunol Wilderness park, to Calaveras Reservoir in the distance. The trailhead we started at is in that developed area down in the valley. ..."Developed" meaning you can see the blacktop of the park road and a few parking lots full of cars.
I'm not sure where Flag Hill gets its name. Maybe somebody planted a flag up here years ago? Maybe there was a person named Flag? One odd thing is as visible as Flag Hill is, it's not even the tallest peak around. There are literally higher peaks in ridges on three sides of it.
Most of the pictures I've shared so far I made with a relatively wide-angle lens. The photo above I made with my "bird shooter" telephoto lens. I carried the bulk and weight of that lens in my bag, wheezing up the steep hill with it, because I thought I might be able to get some great bird pictures. Indeed, while there were a number of birds around, not just song birds but also a couple of falcons, a few red tail hawks, and countless turkey vultures, they never remained still enough for me to attach the lens and capture a good pictures. So at the top of the mountain I decided I might as well use the telephoto lens for something. Why not these lovebirds? 😂
BTW these pictures are literally "Photoshopped", in that I edited all of them with Adobe Photoshop. But per my recent journal about Fake or not? they're not "Photoshopped" in the sense of being fake. I used Photoshop to balance shadows and highlights, adjust color balance, and apply sharpening. Nothing about the content has been changed— nothing moved, added, or removed; nobody made to look taller, slimmer, or curvier, etc.
Getting back to the thread of "I carried this heavy lens all the way up the mountain, I might as well use it," I had fun with distance shots such as the one with the triangular peak, above.
Oddly this peak is unnamed, even on the park map. Heck, there isn't even a formal trail to it. The handful of people you can see in the photo just cross-countried it along the ridgeline. From where I'm standing the trail bends sharply to the right and loops around the east side of Flag Hill. It's a longer, less steep way down than up. Hmm, maybe we should go up that way one of these times.
After we got home I wondered just how long it's been since our last visit to Flag Hill. I mean, I know we've done this hike at least 4 times, maybe more, over the course of many years. Sometimes we've gone later in the season and it is hot out here. Hot and brown. This is a great time of year when the air is pleasantly cool— but not cold— and the hills are swathed in emerald green. It turns out our last visit here, in January 2022, was similar. Well, two years later has been a great time to visit again.
