Continuing our trend of trying to complete multiple hikes in one day, we set our sights on Briones Regional Park, another East Bay park with three Nifty Ninety peaks: Briones, Mott and Russell Peaks. The park is centrally located in Contra Costa County and covers 6,256 acres of rolling, grassy hills.
I decided to tackle Briones and Mott Peaks on one hike starting from the Briones Road Staging Area in Martinez. It’s location in the north-central part of the park got us closest to both peaks and minimized the number of miles we had to hike. The staging area was not large, with no lot, just roadside parking.
After our two hour hike, we drove to the Bear Creek Staging Area in the southwestern corner of the park in Lafayette. It was a beautiful drive along the western perimeter of the park, through rural horse country. We even went past a farm where we saw a large group of “cowboys” learning to lasso.
Compared to the Briones staging area, Bear Creek is really well-developed, with multiple lots accommodating up to 100 cars. It was quite busy when we arrived a little before 1:00 P.M. Our hike to Russell Peak took longer than planned because we missed our turnoff, so instead of doing an out-and-back, we ended up on a loop, which was fine for change of scenery, but meant that we added about 0.80 miles to our trip.
On a side note, it’s likely that Russell Peak can be reached via a much shorter hike by starting from Panorama Drive. However, I wasn’t sure about the parking situation since this was a residential neighborhood so didn’t want to take my chances.
We had started our first hike to Briones and Mott Peaks around 9:20 A.M. We finished the Russell Peak hike close to 3:00 P.M. Not too bad, considering that it had taken about 20 minutes to from one staging area to the other.
On our way home, we stopped in Oakland for a very late lunch at Brenda’s Oakland for some New Orleans-style po’boys. There are two locations in San Francisco, and this was our first time visiting it’s East Bay outpost. Bellies satisfied, we continued our trip back home, mentally gearing ourselves up for the South Bay hikes we were going to be doing tomorrow.
To read more about our hike to each of Briones Regional Park’s Nifty Ninety peaks, click on a peak below:
- #40 Briones Peak, 1,483′
- #41 Mott Peak, 1,424′
- #42 Russell Peak, 1,357′
Follow our progress bagging the Bay Area’s Nifty Ninety here.