Quad Tam: July 24th, 2021

On the way up to first summit

Widowmaker!

Quad Tam is another brain child of Ram and I was definitely intrigued.  It basically involved doing 4 summits of Mt. Tamalpais (Tam).  To get this done it takes about 32 miles and around 9,500 feet of climbing, a pretty tough day indeed!  I met Shawn and Ram early and we parked at a spot I had never been to before and when we hit the trail it was still dark.  Neither of them had brought a light as it was supposed to be civil daylight when we started but there was thick tree cover in that area so we couldn't see.  Luckily I had a flashlight with me and I lit up the wide dirt road that we were climbing until we could all see without the aid of artificial light.  We did take one wrong turn toward the the beginning of our first climb up Tam and had to turn around and go back down to get on the right trail, nothing wrong with some bonus elevation gain!  We made our way up the famous "widowmaker" route that I don't think is even an official trail, more of a steep carved out area in which water pipes run up to the summit.  We made it up to the top and decided to do the rock scramble to the peak instead of going up the trail like normal people do 😁.  I think the rock scramble is something that most of the bay area trail runners take pride in doing.  In fact, we decided that it would not be a true quad tam unless we did the rock scramble on each summit.  So, at this point it was one down and three to go!

Rock Scramble!

The East Peak

The first downhill we took, the east peak fire trail, was pretty sketchy and it was even hard for us to find. Once we found it and started down we quickly realized that thing was super steep!  There were some obstacles in the way as it was not very well maintained (if at all).  It was difficult to make up any time after the first summit as we had to take the downhill very slow in order not to kill ourselves!  We finally reached our downhill destination of Lake Lagunitas and we went around the backside of the lake.  It was very scenic down there as that was my first time seeing the lake at eye level rather than from way up on the summit of Mt. Tam.  Then we located our next uphill route, a skinny trail that is called the Lagunitas fire trail.  It was very steep and overgrown and we could tell it was not really maintained.  So we did a lot of ducking under manzanitas and marched up the climb.  We got near the top and decided to check out Middle Peak which I have never been to so it was cool to see.  Then we made our way over to the main summit (East Peak) and did our obligatory rock scramble to the top.  Alright, two summits down and two to go!  Our next downhill took us in a different direction as our destination was Old Mill Park in downtown Mill Valley.  It was by far our longest stretch of downhill on this run.  We even had to do some paved roads in order to get to our destination which was ok because it allowed us to make up some time.

More cool views

Lake Lagunitas from the summit

It was nice getting to Old Mill Park as we could refill our water and use the bathroom etc.. Then we began our third climb up one of the most popular routes to the summit and that is up a road called Summit Ave. from the park and then up the Temelpa trail.  The second half of this climb is pretty exposed and the sun was out in full force!  There was no wind at all and it felt like climbing in an oven.  I was pretty happy when we got to the top and did our scramble as the heat made that our toughest climb of the day, until we got to the last climb, more on that later.  At the third summit we refilled our water and this is when I discovered my water bladder had a leak...nooooo!  I didn't have any emergency water bottles with me, only a reusable little water cup.  We still had two downhills and one summit to go.  I filled up the bladder anyway and drank as we traversed the next downhill.  The water was slowly oozing out and soaking my shorts making it impossible to keep them up above my waist.  After traversing some fire roads and getting back down to Lake Lagunitas I was out of water and we had the toughest climb of the day ahead of us..Collier trail.  It was hot and this trail was super steep and it seemed to go on forever.  I tried to block it out of my mind that I was out of water etc...  We finally got to the top and I immediately went to the water fountain and downed many cups of water to quench my intense thirst.  I was super glad to be done with climbing for the day.  

Lake Lagunitas from ground level

A tough but great day at Mt. Tam

We completed the last rock scramble and all we had to do was a steep one mile downhill section of Fern Creek trail and traverse some fire roads back to the car.  It was so nice to be done with this run as it was very hard but at the same time it was rewarding to know that we did that.  It was also a great training run for the Bear 100.  A normal person would say never again but I know that we will eventually do it as a training run in the future.  Oddly enough I am looking forward to it and maybe next time my water bladder won't leak!