Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Baker, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

The evening looked to have some fog over the Golden Gate, but I decided to try my luck. I grabbed a quick take-out burger, ate it at the trailhead, slung my pack on, and set off up the Coastal Trail behind the bridge.

Slacker Ridge was covered in fog. Down around the other side of the headlands, the ridge line above the Waldo Tunnel saw cold air blowing hard across, pushing the fog line. At first I though there was a chance for a photo, but pretty soon I felt like an arctic explorer in my down jacket and balaclava. Pretty silly a couple of miles from San Francisco. But then, you know what Mark Twain is supposed to have said about summer in San Francisco.

The bridge was pretty much buried in fog, and it was getting darker. Then I got a bright idea. I looked down at Fort Baker in Sausalito. It was still clear of the clouds.

I headed back along the trail and up and over to my car, shed my hiking boots, and drove down to the Fort Baker waterfront. On an abandoned road that crumbled to an end above the sea, in the gathering darkness, I exposed this image of the bridge against the fog, with the lights of Seacliff behind. It was pretty dark, and it took a thirty second wide-open exposure to capture the detail and blue sky shown in this image. A couple of seconds later the cloud cover was across, and the world had gone to black.