2022-01-05 37 -121

Location

In between Almaden Quicksilver County Park and Calero County Park, both in San Jose, CA.

Participants

sporeball

Plans

There are three options I saw that might have been suitable for accessing the hashpoint:

from Cinnabar Hills Road (probably blocked);
by way of Via Vespero, The Cross Road, and some trail work (blocked at Via Vespero);
using McKean Road to access Calero County Park itself, then performing a lot of trail work (very risky).

I made plans to travel by bicycle using one of these.

Expedition

After some deliberation, I decided to see how close I could get to the hashpoint by way of the first option, setting off at around 3:30 PM Pacific time. Bertram Road turned out to be accessible, and so did Cinnabar Hills! As my cell service started to die out, I thought I might still have a chance.

There's a problem with the most uphill-oriented gear on either side of my bike that renders both unusable, so I inevitably had to get off and start walking. Just before 5:00 PM I finally had to stop: at a certain fork in the road, a metal gate blocks off one side, and a chain blocks off the other. This was disappointing, but I had still gotten much further than I expected to -- roughly half a mile away. A car exited through the gate as I stopped to eat, but I made no attempt to hail it.

3:30 PM turned out to be a bit late of a starting time for this expedition: I had received a new light for Christmas a week and a half prior to this expedition, but never put it on the bike, so most of the return trip would have to be helped by streetlight alone. A concerned woman shouted at me as I stopped on Almaden Road to put a jacket on, and, addressing her in my finest deadvoice (for volume's sake), I informed her that I was in fact fine, not lost, and not too tired, either. I got back home at about 6:15 PM, having traveled close to 25 miles in my attempt.