Imagine my (pleasant) surprise when my dad asked me if I wanted to go to Mission Peak again less than a week after we had finished our New Year’s Eve run. The steep hike had been set as the destination for a work get-together reunion that took place on the 29th.
I half suspected that Mission Peak was my dad’s suggestion, but it wasn’t. It was actually chosen by the former co-worker Max who organized the event. Max lives in Fremont and is a seasoned veteran of the trail; from what I heard, he hikes it several times a week.
There were a total of six people on the hike: Tim, Dad, Max, dad’s boss Honebin + wife, and Applied Materials engineer David. Before long we split into two groups. Dad, Max and I were part of the fast group set on reaching the peak. The others were part of a slow group that planned on turning back once the clock hit 2:45pm.
I have to say, Max was super freaking fast. He took no breaks going up. My dad and I could not keep pace with him, no matter how hard we tried; if you were a bystander, you would’ve seen us huffing, puffing, and sweating like crazy. Because of that, the reunion hike got morphed into a father-son event.
We ran into Max again about 5 minutes from the top. In our attempt to keep up, we finished the trail much earlier than last time (12/31 = 11:11am to 2:30pm with 22min at top; 1/29 = 1:23pm to 3:51pm with 12min at top) and got a healthy workout (my Apple Watch showed a total of 1307 calories burned by the end of the day).
