If you drive east on state route 24 from Oakland, CA you’ll go through the Caldecott Tunnel and pop out in a small town called Orinda. Many times when you come through the tunnel to Orinda the weather will change from cloudy and cold to clear and warm. The Oakland hills hold the weather from the bay from spreading east, and alternately keeps the heat from the central valley from spreading to the Bay. The first neighborhood you’ll see in Orinda is called Wilder, it’s accessible from the highway but nestled back in the hills. Formerly part of a large ranch a 230 acre parcel was cleaved off in the early 2000s and eventually built into the neighborhood of Wilder.

An adjacent section of 1300 acres spanning the hills between Orinda and Oakland was kept as open space meaning that residents of Wilder have some amazing mountains and trails right in the backyard. A year or so ago we’d gone out hiking around these hills for the afternoon and I was slow to develop the film, slower to scan it, and slower still to post a few pictures. Know that there’s a whole lot more to this area than these 5 pictures and that the terrain all around Contra Costa County is equally scenic with Mt. Diablo being the centerpiece.

I’m pretty sure that when I scanned this set of images I didn’t convert the scans to monochrome which left some subtle color artifacts in the final images. I started to fix that and decided that I kind of liked the look so I decided to just leave it alone.