A few months back, M had bought a tent on a whim. With ski season and weekend Tahoe trips coming to an end, we decided to finally put the tent into use with an inaugural camping trip. Now as most bay area outdoor enthusiasts would know, it’s nearly impossible to get a campsite reservations at the big parks like Yosemite and Big Sur without booking months in advance, so we settled on the lesser known Fremont Peak State Park, a little over an hour southeast of southbay. Though it lacks the big name appeal, Fremont Peak was a nice place for a weekend camping getaway with great views of both the surrounding landscape and the stars.
Fremont Peak, a park above the clouds
We stayed at campsite 8 in the Valley View campground. The campsite was small, but had more than enough room for a single large tent. It was a little inconvenient not having a water spigot or trashcan in our site, but both were just a short walk away, and in exchange we had probably the best view of the valley out of all the campsites there.
View of sunset from our campsite
Fremont Peak is a relatively small state park. We spent the afternoon hiking the only loop trail (~4-5 miles) around the park with an offshoot going up to the summit. The landscape actually changes rather dramatically from one side of the park to the other. On the west side we hiked through mostly dense woodland (despite the segment being called the Valley View Trail, it had the least view out of all the trail segments), to the north was more dry and sparse, and the southeast part of the trail was on the edge of a steep incline, covered in green grass and blooming purple flowers.
Hills full of flowers
The actual peak summit was definitely the highlight of the hike. The ascent started off fairly moderate, but by the end we were scrambling over large rocks to get to the top. The weather was great the day we went, and we could see for miles in all directions. You could see Monterey bay, a lot of the central valley, and even a little bit of Silicon Valley peeking from behind the Santa Cruz mountains to the north. The descent was a bit precarious - there were a lot of people at the summit who we thought were just chilling up there, but we suspect they were just stuck and not sure how to get down because a large group left right after seeing us make our way down - but we eventually made it down and back to the campsite.
View from the summit
Aside from the great views, one of the biggest defining features of Fremont Peak is the observatory. A group of friendly volunteers work at the observatory and hold astronomy talks and viewings every Saturday afternoon and evening without a full moon. We stopped by in the afternoon in the middle of the hike to peek through some of the telescopes they had set up to see prominences and sunspots on the sun. Later that evening, we returned to attend the talk on solar eclipses. It was a little cloudy that night, but we were still able to spot multiple constellations, the International Space Station, and galaxies much farther away. My favorites of the night were the views of Jupiter and a few of its moons and the globular cluster M3.
Fremont Peak observatory at night
Before deciding to make this trip, I had never even heard of Fremont Peak, and most other people I talked to hadn’t either (“Is that in Fremont?”). It’s definitely a hidden gem in the increasingly overcrowded bay area, and a great place to go for some peace and quiet in the wilderness.
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