2 of the 9 SLO sisters: Mount Madonna and Bishop Peak

Memorial Day Weekend was coming up and we had plans to visit friends in San Luis Obispo (aka SLO). Besides hanging out with friends, camping, soaking in the hot springs, going to the beach, etc., I also wanted to check out some mountains in the region. I found out that between SLO and Morro Bay there's a chain of nine volcanic peaks and hills, and a few of them I could easily climb between other activities. I decided to hike to the top of two of them which are close to downtown SLO: Cerro San Luis Obispo (also known as Mount Madonna) and the highest of the sisters: Bishop Peak. Both of them can easily be reached via numerous trails from different sides. Here are two examples.

Cerro San Luis Obispo / Mount Madonna
We park at the south end of Hill St, San Luis Obispofrom there we walk up the hill through a private road (which has a sign that hikers to Mount Madonna are welcome). Soon we get to a tiny eucalyptus tree forest with lots and lots of cacti. From there we walk on an official trail up to Cerro San Luis Oispo which first leads to the east side of the mountain, then reaches the false summit south of the highpoint and winds to the top from west. No difficulties (T2/ Class I)

Bishop Peak
The most common starting point to climb Bishop Peak is the parking lot on on Foothill Blvd. From there a wide and obvious path leads to the little saddle between the highpoint and its eastern false summit. This is where "the official trail" ends. In order to get to the view point on the eastern, false summit one needs to do a few class II steps. If you want to get to the real summit of Bishop Peak, you need to follow the ridge (a little left and right to avoid bushes and poison oak) to the base of the huge rocks which are obviously the highpoint. For the last few meters I had to pass, because with my sandals I wasn't really equipped to climb the III+(?) all the way to the top.