WOW!!! Such a fun and beautiful route!! And a perfect day for a run! I started at Mitchell Creek Park (there's a $6 fee for parking) and hit Twin Peak and Eagle Peak on the way up to summit Diablo (the peaks are right on the trail up so for anyone attempting this route in the future you don't have to turn off the trail to hit the summit of Twin or Eagle Peak). I brought a light vest with 4 Huma Gels and a soft flask with me and I filled up the flask at the water fountain at the top of Diablo.
After that I hit North Peak, then found the single track to Mt. Olympia. I had run all the trails up to this point before so the single track on the way to Olympia and on was new trail exploring for me! This single track was definitely overgrown so I was diving over, under, and through trees and I lost the trail once but once I got to Olympia the trail cleared up again. The summit for Olympia is a few meters off the main trail and the summit marker on Olympia had fallen down and was laying on the summit so the pic with the fallen summit marker is at the top of Olympia.
After hitting the Olympia summit it was smooth sailing back down to the start with a mix of wide non technical trails and single track. I kept an eye on the map so I wouldn't make a wrong turn- the route I ran had a few trail junctions to navigate on the way down. That downhill is FUN and with all the rain there were 5 or 6 creek crossings during the descent too! When I mapped the route through Strava it said the route was going to be 13.7 but I ended up running about a mile farther than that and ended at 14.8.
Gear:
- Merrell Long Sky 2 Shield (these definitely helped with the creek crossings, the tread and draining system is awesome!)
- 4 Huma Gels (2 caffeinated and 2 normal) with me and I definitely should have started eating earlier on this one. I took the first at the top of Mt. Diablo but I definitely would have had more energy if I had started eating earlier.
- Ultimate Direction Pack + a soft flask
- Kinesys Sunscreen love this stuff! Applied it before I started and didn't even think about it after that!