Burma/Buckeye Loop, Mt. Diablo

This is one of my favorite short but challenging runs. Some may say it's hardly worth the drive to only do under 4 miles, and that's ok. It's totally worth it for me. I happen to love the windy, curvy, (some may say sickening) drive. I park at the bottom of the infamous Burma hill, and run the loop heading towards the ranch, so clockwise. This is an excellent time of year to do this loop as the creeks are flowing, although barely, the ponds are full of frogs, so it sounds amazing, and parts of Stage Rd Trail are over run w/the creek, which is always fun to run in. That was a massive run-on sentence. Anyway, I've been running out of Mitchell Canyon almost exclusively for the past few months, so today I decided to get wild and crazy and hit up one of my old favorites and see how the ankle held up. It was a great morning!

 It was 8:45, and around 60, if you were wondering. Beautiful!

 These rays of light....I just couldn't get over it.

 Above, I get to cross the creek that runs down this little valley at the top, and again at the bottom once I loop down to it. If you look close, way down there at the bottom, you can see a white line that is the trail.

 Above, man I love this picture! In the distance you can see the sun hitting the section of trail that the creek flows over/down, right under the Oak Tree that's left of the trail.

 Above, I'm on the hill above the frog pond (Little Pine Pond) and it sounds amazing with all the frogs. And below...sometimes I take pictures of hog prints and say "it was a big print", but I realize I give you no comparison. Here's what I would normally call a big one, next to my size 11 shoe.