Saturday A Ride 6/21: Diablo + Tam

Hello friends, this week we are blessed with the longest Saturday of 2025 so we are going to take advantage of all the daylight by climbing both Mt. Diablo and Mt. Tam on the same day. I was worried that Mr. Kessler’s 10k ft route last week might not have been enough for some people, so we’re gonna do 11k this week! Obviously this route cannot begin at Summit Bicycles; rather we are starting from the Walnut Creek BART Station at 8 AM (it’s a long day out so we gotta start early). A short warmup down Danville then up south gate and down north gate, then we’ll make our way toward the Berkeley Hills race course and Wildcat Canyon to get to the Richmond Bridge. Once we get to San Rafael and Fairfax it’s just the normal Alpine Dam/Seven Sisters route up to Mt. Tam that everyone is familiar with, and then we just need to get back to the Caltrain station or wherever you need to be to get home. Easy!

The goal of this ride is to just survive to the end so we will maintain a very reasonable endurance pace all day long. Regroup at the top of each climb. Water/bathroom stops are marked on the route.

We don’t get to do Diablo often so I hope people are excited to join, but I understand it is logistically challenging given the start/end points are different. If you are driving to Walnut Creek in the morning, you can take BART from Embarcadero back to Walnut Creek in the afternoon; if you are starting from SF, you’ll just need to take this train to Walnut Creek early in the morning. It’s a ~40 minute ride via the Yellow line and BART trains run every 20 minutes.

Additionally, for true climbing enjoyers this is only the first half of an optional “four peaks weekend” where after doing Diablo and Tam on Saturday, you can go do Umunhum and Hamilton on Sunday. Doesn’t that sound like so much fun?

Hope to see you there!

Route
https://www.strava.com/routes/3369840874290508572
124 miles, 11,300 feet

Start/End Location
Start at Walnut Creek BART Station (parking lot east of the station) https://maps.app.goo.gl/qm3Wjzpnpg3uBwBa9

End at Embarcadero BART Station or Caltrain SF Station

Time: Meet 8:00 AM, Leave 8:10 AM

Ride etiquette: https://www.altovelo.org/ride-rules 

Ride Leader: Richard Red