Los Huecos Trail & Cañada de Pala Trail, Joseph D. Grant County Park, Santa Clara County, CA, 2/25/2009
Some days - like this winter afternoon in Joseph D. Grant County Park near San Jose, CA - I end up hiking a lot and photographing little. Under a stormy and moody sky the lighting was poor throughout my hike. Finally at sunset, after I had climbed 1,000 feet to where Los Huecos Trail and Cañada de Pala Trail meet, the sun emerged and flooded this pair of dormant oak trees with intense golden light, the last sunlight of the day. I was struck by how the trees gleamed before the bluish storm clouds and a distant snowy Mt. Hamilton. One of the landmark peaks surrounding the San Francisco Bay area, at 4,360 feet Mt. Hamilton is the tallest mountain overlooking Santa Clara (Silicon) Valley, and is the site of Lick Observatory, the first permanently occupied mountain-top observatory in the world.
