Eagle Peak, Mt. Diablo

Well, I've wanted to do this run for years.  Eagle Peak looks so pretty and I've stared at it many times coming down from the summit and out Mitchell Canyon.  So today was the day. I set my week up to have two rest days from running so I'd be fresh going into today's adventure.  It was still pretty tough.
The trail along the ridge is pretty technical and hard to get into any sort of a running groove. I usually am able to run pretty strong on downhill tech stuff, but this was just too loose and squirrely to ever really feel good. I had my feet slide out from under me and went down hard once, while the Beast had many close calls.  There may or may not have been a lot more "adult words" used than usual. But, it was pretty, and it was challenging, and it was an "ok, I've done it, no need to do this one again" run. This is a 7 mile, 2,500 ft elevation gain run. Some pictures for you-

 That's me! This is running out the bottom of the valley.  Below is some of the amazing colors around right now.

 After around 2 miles you start to climb, right up to the sun it feels like.

 Heading out across Eagle Peak. We go down a bit and then climb that mountain back there, this is after already climbing up to Deer Flat.

 This is looking to the left, if you look close you can see the switch backs on the other side of the valley that we already climbed up.

 This was me keeping my eyes on my feet and the trail, it was pretty gnarly up there.

 There goes the Beast! She spotted this guy and was not a fan.

 I loved the view of where we came down from.  There's a lot to see in this picture...You can see the tall radio tower, go left to the little bump and that is the Summit. Go more left to a bigger bump and that is Moses Rock, come forward or towards me in the picture to the ridge that has tan grass on the right side, that's Bald Ridge. Follow it down to where there's no more tan grass, and that is the start of Eagle Peak...where we started heading down from. On the left of the picture you can make out a single track heading down through the scrub, that's Back Creek Trail, another one of our favorites.

 "How'd you get up there, Beast?"  You are looking at the trail, see it?? No. "Just climb up". Ok.

 This was about the coolest thing I have seen in a long time. I'm pretty good at spotting lizards, even if they are up on a hill on a rock and not on the trail, i can still spot them.  This thing, though...I had never seen one in real life, just on the nature channel.  So cool!! He looked like a shrunken dinosaur.

 We made it to the summit, now just have to get down.

The Beast, with some ridge left to cover in the background, and our neighborhood, and if you look close, the kids schools. It was a great outing, but a tough, tough run.  I really tensed up on the downhill because it was super loose, and can already feel I'm going to be pretty sore in unusual places.  Kind of a bummer to put in all the work to get up there and then not be able to let loose on the downhill.  Still fun though, but for sure one I don't plan on repeating anytime soon!