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Photo: Briones Regional Park, Contra Costa County, California
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A One Hundred Mile Goal in Briones Regional Park and a few photos taken along the way.

Happiness is setting and reaching a personal goal. And to add icing to the cake, this one came with some photos made along the way.

For reasons I won’t go into here, I had fallen out of my hiking mode throughout much of this calendar year. In short, hiking has traditionally been my version of going to the gym. As the end of summer neared, I could see in the mirror that I gained some unwanted pounds and was starting to feel pretty bad about having rested on my laurels (read: butt). One thing I felt badly about was not doing a few hikes I wanted to do in the Sierra. As Labor Day loomed I still hadn’t hit the hills. I had started walking on the local bike trail to warm up the leg muscles a few miles at a time. Even if I wasn’t going to be able make my Sierra hikes this year, I knew my health depended on making myself start moving again. Then the straw came, the camel’s back broke, and no more excuses could be made; Goal Set: 100 miles of hiking in the hills of my local Briones Regional Park in 4 weeks. Go!

The first week I did five days of 5 miles each. The following week, another five days with each being 6.5 miles. By week three I had stretched my mileage to around 8.5 miles each. Each one of these hikes averaged around 1,000′ to 1,400′ of elevation gain. To add endurance, in the fourth week I started carrying my full camera backpack which weighs about 25 lbs.. By the time I got done with my 16th hike, I had hiked a total of 99.4 miles. Dang it! The next morning I clocked in another five miles to officially crest the 100-mile mark.

On a few of these hikes I carried along my compact Sony RX100mIII 20mp Point-n-Shoot camera. With the exception of the featured photo (above) and a couple others that were shot with my Nikon D800, most of the images you see below were shot with that little pocket-sized camera that produces some incredible results. Almost all were shot along the Briones Crest and Black Oak – Mott Peak trails.

I hope you’ll let me know if you enjoyed seeing the images presented here. (Comments and shares are always especially appreciated.)


Briones Regional Park Photo Gallery,
East Bay Hills, Contra Costa County, California

*Click on an image to see it larger.*

If you especially enjoy any of these images and would like to purchase a print, you can order them through my archive, or contact me directly.

*** SPECIAL OFFER *** Save 30% on any print purchase over $50 using the Discount code “1609BA3-30” – valid through October 31, 2016. (Limit 1 order per customer.)



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Gary Crabbe is an award-winning commercial and editorial outdoor travel photographer and author based out of the San Francisco Bay Area, California. He has seven published books on California to his credit, including “Photographing California; v1-North”, which won the prestigious 2013 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal award as Best Regional title. His client and publication credits include the National Geographic Society, the New York Times, Forbes Magazine, TIME, The North Face, Subaru, L.L. Bean, Victoria’s Secret, Sunset Magazine, The Nature Conservancy, and many more. Gary is also a photography instructor and consultant, offering both public and private photo workshops. He also works occasionally a professional freelance Photo Editor.

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