I’M QUINCY KOETZ

An outdoorsman and Nurse Practitioner living in Northern California. When I first started this blog, I was an EMT living in Southern California and this blog has followed...

Read More

Category: Bay Area Backyard

Latest Blog


 By Quincy Koetz
Bair Island Hiking

A Salute to Bair Island Hiking and Birding

I’m going off-script from my fanatical peakbagging in covering Bair Island Ecological Reserve. It’s fairly flat, urbanized and not exactly a destination for hiking. But good events in life have naturally contracted my world to a much smaller one. While I’ll eventually return to mountain climbing, I must find contentment in the mor...

Continue reading ...
Tank Hill Park

Bay Area Nifty Ninety Peaks

I cover a lot of obscure mountains and hikes on this website. Often I hike a mountain because it lands on an equally unknown peakbagging list, such as the Bay Area Nifty Ninety Peaks. Peakbagging is a relentless though highly questionable pursuit of tagging summits in a systematic way. Though heavily ridiculed by “serious climbers”,...

Continue reading ...
Rose Peak

Rose Peak Hike, Ohlone/Sunol Regional Wilderness

Rose Peak (3,817 feet) is the highest mountain of the East Bay Regional Parks system and the highest legally accessible point in Alameda County. Although not tall by California standards, it is one of the tallest mountains in the Bay Area and high enough to receive dustings of snow several times a year. Given Rose...

Continue reading ...


2024 (10)

2023 (20)

2022 (7)

2021 (12)

2020 (42)

2019 (47)

2018 (34)

2017 (26)

2016 (25)

2015 (21)

2014 (81)

2013 (52)

2012 (41)

2011 (83)

2010 (24)

2017 © All Rights Reserved Quincy Koetz