Joined Gabby and her crew (Phil, Jesus, and Aldo) on their Mt. Hamilton ride. It was Kira's first time up! The start of the ride was really cold, colder than the forecast said it would be. I didn't really warm up until closer to the base of the climb. When we got to the base of Mt. Hamilton, we all stripped layers. I knew this at some point in the past but had forgotten that Low Key Hill Climbs ends the series with Mt. Hamilton during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. While we were taking layers off, a ride leader came over and told us that they were. This was confusing since Gabby was the ride leader. We soon figured out he meant for LKHC. :) On the way over, I was already getting hungry and I was starting to regret bringing only one bar. I was going to bring a second bar but didn't because I didn't think I would need it. Luckily I had Super High-Carb Mix in the bottles. At the start, Kira was going close to my PR pace which wasn't what we had talked about doing. We were going to take it easy. Her pace eventually came down (because she was telling me her zombie story?). Phil, Jesus, and Aldo took off at the start. Aldo was on a fixie with pretty tall gearing. We caught him later as he was mashing his way up. Gabby was having an issue with her fit, that had been adjusted to address it before the ride, but unfortunately it didn't fix the problem and she was struggling because of that. The higher we climbed, the warmer it got. We saw plenty of riders descending back down. Most of them were going surprisingly slow. I guess they must have been in the "Likes to Climb" (instead of "Likes to Descend") camp. We stopped at the Grant Lake Trailhead to use the restroom, get water, and eat snack. There was no way I could've waited until the top to eat. It was after this stop when it got noticeably warmer. We did a pretty chill pace the whole way up but I was still happy to be done. Unfortunately the gate up to Lick Observatory was closed. There were a few people that seemed understandably upset that all that effort wasn't going to count towards their LKHC time. I'm assuming because the segment ends at the observatory? No idea. On the way down, frustratingly, I kept catching up to cars. When it happened, I stopped to get photos of Kira. Another frustrating thing was the headwind as we were descending. Oops, we didn't realize we had a tailwind on the way up. By the time we got back down to Grant Lake, the wind was starting to get chilly. Up until that point, it felt warm even though I was descending in shorts and short sleeves. By the time we got to down to Clayton Rd., the arm warmers went back on and by the time we did the last climb, it was time to put the vest back on. I was pretty surprised that I wasn't hungry until we got back into the urban sprawl of San Jose. I think seeing all the restaurants didn't help. At that point I was ready to eat anything. The route to and from Mt. Hamilton (after Clayton Rd.) was on some pretty busy and unpleasant roads. Would've liked to have changed that but it wasn't my ride so I didn't want to say anything. Saw lots of hawks/falcons (I can never tell the difference) and wild turkeys!