San Jacinto Peak seems to be a hike I need to do every few years. Here is a view from the valley:

Last time on June 21, 2008 with Devin. This time on July 19, 2012 with Trisha. It’s always a good hike. It took five hours up and three hours back down, for a total of 11 miles on the trail.

I love the views from the top. There are not many places in the country, or the world, where you can look down from 10,800 feet into a valley floor at 500 feet, so close that you feel you could reach down and touch it. That’s the hallmark of San Jacinto Peak.

The peak is very rugged, covered with huge boulders and no paths or trails. The last 200 feet of climb is basically clambering over boulders the size small cars or even bigger. In the distance is the broad back of San Gorgonio mountain, sometimes called greyback, the highest peak in Southern California, at about 11,500. That’s next to climb to do in August.

Just 200 feet below the peak, there is the famous stone hut, built mostly from stones and wood from location. It contains four rugged bunk beds and a variety of supplies that people left. There is also an emergency supplies cabinet, safely latched to keep the mice (and other critters) out. I am sure this hut supplies good shelter for hikers caught in a storm, rain, thunder or snow, at the peak. Although I wonder about its safety in thunderstorms. Accidents at the stone hut on the peak of Mount Whitney in thunderstorm come to mind.

The arrow points to the location of the top station of the Aerial Tramway from where we started hiking, 5.5 trail miles away and 2,200 feet lower than the peak.

Made it to the very peak.

It was time for my annual Adirondack hike. I picked the Mossy Cascade Trail to Hopkins Mountain from Keene Valley. From the book Adirondack Trails, High Peaks Region, it looked like a good solid day hike that should not give me too much trouble.

It started out just fine.

I arrived at the trailhead, just as described in the book, right before a steel bridge off Highway 73, 2 miles south of Keene Valley. I got there at 8:00am, and there was not another car to be seen. Clearly, I was going to be the only one on this trail.

A nice footpath started, and the trail was marked by red blazes. It climbed steadily, just as the book said, up to a place where there is a “camp” at about 1.0 mile.

Here is the cabin. It was obviously not occupied. I loved it though. I could live there a good part of the year. This was as close as I got. I didn’t dare risk getting shot or attacked by some dog.

Then here are the instructions going forward from the camp:

I underlined the critical section. Cross the brook (I did) and start climbing. I saw the yellow blazed property line. I went another hundred yards or so, and suddenly the trail fizzled out. Completely fizzled out. I was sure I had missed it, so I double-backed to the brook and tried again. No success. The trail was gone. Here is what things looked like there:

Can you see any trail?

How about here:

I found myself scrambling over logs and through brambles. The going was very tough and against all hope, I never found another trail. Here is the map of me scrambling about, finding the trail:

You can kind of see the panic, can’t you?

But I thought I could possibly do it. The GPS showed the trail (fat dotted line) and I know I was right around it. So I thought I might just be in a bad spot, and if I just kept going, the trail would clear up again and I could walk on without strugging through the bushes. Here are my efforts:

Near marker 10 the trail stopped. You can see this section in the map above. Marker 8 is the end of the road for me, where I turned around. You can see, I kept roughly on the trail, but it took enormous energy. I kept having to hike with the GPS right in my hand, turning constantly to stay on “the trail” that was not there. You can see me rambling back and forth.

When I got to marker 8, at 1.7 miles, I rested and got to thinking:

• Going was very slow and very laborious, since I was climbing clear through the woods. Without a GPS I would already be lost and if it weren’t for the creek I could hear within earshot, I’d have no sense of direction anymore.
• If my GPS failed for any reason, I’d be toast right there. It would already be tricky to find my way back.
• If I broke a leg or incapacitated myself any other way, I’d be toast, too. Nobody knew where exactly I was. I had no cell phone reception at all. Since there was no trail anymore, nobody would find me, even if they looked. Since the trail was gone due to lack of use, clearly, nobody just comes around here.

This would have been different had I been with a buddy, and with a backup GPS. We could have slugged on and up, even though it was very slow and rough going. Being alone, the risks were way too high – so I decided to do the only right thing, and turn around.

After some meandering back – you see that on the map above, I found the original trail and just retraced my steps back.

When I look at the full map of my trip, I notice an odd thing. See the red and blue arrows? I went up and down this trail on a footpath no more than two feet wide. I retraced my steps exactly. How then is the GPS showing the two lines apart as far as they are? Something obviously got it offset and confused at the top. It goes to show me, even the GPS is not bullet proof. The distance between the two lines, which I know are identical, are at least 50 or more feet in the real world. Enough to get lost.

All in all, I  was out for about 140 minutes and hiked a total of 3.4 miles. I didn’t get anywhere near Hopkins Mountain, and probably never will.

Hiker be warned. Trip 51 in the High Peaks Region book, 13th Edition, the Mossy Cascade Trail, describes a trail that is simply no longer there.

So – having extra time on my hands – I cheated – and drove to the top of Whiteface Mountain. But that’s another blog entry.

Half Dome is, on a scale from 1 to 10 in difficulty, an 11. This just shows the last half hour of a grueling 8 hours up.

Of course, on the sobering side, guys like Alex Honnold, climb the face of this without a rope. Watch this video and tremble.

Last Saturday, looking for a quick practice hike, we decided for the Clevenger trail off of Highway 78 on the way to Ramona. Here is a post with a lot more pictures than I took, so it may help. The trailhead is off the first main pullout off 78 heading east, a few miles after the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

The whole hike from trail head to peak is 2.3 miles and can be done in a little more than an hour. It was a hot day, and we started at about 10:00 am, with the sun beating down. For a moment there I wondered if it was wise. But we made it just fine. At the point where I have the red arrow in the map above, there is a surprise:

Somebody mounted two steel chairs, cemented on top of a large boulder, and built a wooden staircase in the back of the boulder to reach the chairs. The chairs rock gently, and all that is missing is a small refrigerator with a couple of cold ones, and it would truly be paradise. The view into the valley is spectacular, the breeze nice and refreshing. I could have rested there for a long time.

However, facing to the right, I saw this vista of the peak or endpoint of the Clevenger Canyon South hike:

So I hiked the 0.3 miles over to the nubby

From there, I and took a picture of the valley from which we started:

The red arrow points to my car!

The Clevenger trail is a nice 3 or 4 hour excursion from Escondido, including driving up and back, and hiking. I’d recommend spring or fall, and not July 1. In July, be sure to bring a cooler with a couple of beers for the glorious chairs.

Jerry Schad’s books list the hike to Cuyamaca Peak, the second highest peak in San Diego County at 6512 feet,  as a hike up and down the Lookout Road, a paved road straight up the mountain. I have done that hike many times over the years. Up the road 2.75 miles, then down again. On the way down it always seems steeper and longer than going up – endless.

This time we took a different route, starting out from the same beginning, the Paso Picacho Campground. The campground is about 11 miles south of Julian off Hwy 79 on the right. The entry fee is $8 per vehicle, and there is a large, safe parking lot. We first took the Azelea Glen Loop Trail, then joined the Fern Flat Fire Road at the Azelea Spring, heading even further north, before joining the Conejos Trail heading south. This trail intersects Lookout Road, so we took the last half mile loop up Cuyamaca on the Lookout Road. This took 5.25 miles, about 2 hours of 10 minutes of walking, plus another hour or so of rests and breathing stops. At the end, we took the Lookout Road all the way down to the campground again, making the entire trip exactly 8 miles long.

The profile shows that it was a very steep climb most of the way, followed by an incredibly steep and steady descent down the paved Lookout Road from the peak.

Not far from the beginning of the hike, still near the campground, we found some morteros, grinding bowls carved into large boulders along the trail by the Kumeyaay Indians. These Native Americans used the circular morteros over 2,000 years ago to grind local nuts and seeds into meals.

I recently wrote about being in awe when standing in rooms and buildings where the Founding Fathers first signed the Declaration of Independence, to the day exactly 236 years ago. I had a feeling of no less awe today, when I took the above picture, and imagined generations of women sitting there 2000 years ago, grinding their nuts, acorns and seeds. What would they have thought if they had seen me standing there as a ghost from the future, taking a picture of this place of theirs.

Near the campground, when we were still fresh and chipper – Trisha, the happy hiker.

Due to the fires in October 2003, all terrain on this mountain is now changed for decades to come. The forest, once thick with cedar, fir, pine and oak, is gone. Dark shady slopes of dense woods are now completely exposed to the sun. Ten years of recovery without forest has allowed the underbrush to burgeon; it is now impenetrable. The picture above shows a typical section along the Azalea Glen Trail. There are signs that the forest will recover, but it will take decades.

The picture above shows a group of seedlings of pines that have all grown since the fires. There are hundreds of those in some areas, where they will clearly recover.

The Leopard Lilies were in bloom everywhere. These are beautiful large orange blossoms that grow in clusters.

Here is a picture taken from the start of the Conejos Trail. We basically hiked straight up this ridge.

Once at the top, the views sometimes reach all the way to Mexico in the south, to the Pacific in the west, the deserts in the east, and Palomar Mountain in the north. Today it was hazy. This is looking from the peak southwest toward where downtown San Diego would be visible on a clearer day.

The underbrush reaches up to the endless forest of burned trees, fir and oak alike, which line all trails and roads all over the Cuyamacas.

Hiking Cuyamaca Peak was a perfect endeavor for this year’s Fourth of July. It was hot, sunny, with a good breeze that helped keep us cool when we needed it. It was an excellent practice hike for the big prize of Half Dome scheduled for September 11th this year.

Today Trisha and I hiked Mt. Woodson. Near the top, at 2850 feet altitude, is the Potatochip Rock. Here is Trisha perched on top.

Ah, superwoman getting ready to take off:

There were other people there, loading it down. I kept waiting for it to snap. It goes hundreds of feet down the cliffs in the back.

On January 7 and 8, 2012, Devin and I made another attempt at climbing Indianhead Peak in the Anza Borrego desert. We didn’t succeed in summiting.

Here is the map of our endeavor (click to enlarge). In 2010, we made an exploratory hike up Palm Canyon, which we documented here. We started at the same place, the parking lot shown on the lower right side of the map. The arrow at Palm Grove points to the first oasis. This is where the maintained trail ends and it is therefore the final destination of many dayhikers. A lot of people make it up there even with small kids. The waypoint marked by the blue flag just to the right, labeled 002, is the location of the New Palm Grove shown in this blog entry.

The arrow labeled “where we stopped in 2010” is just that. However, since I lost the GPS I used in 2010 on Kearsarge pass in August 2010, I didn’t have the exact waypoint with me, and I also didn’t have a good map. While I had planned to take the ridge directly after that spot, shown in the 2010 blog entry, we missed it this time and overshot by a good mile and a half, finally arriving at the arrow pointing to Our Camp. That’s where we spent the night. It was exactly five miles from the parking lot, and a very, very tough five miles.

After the first oasis, the trail ends, and hiking becomes very difficult. Making progress means climbing over immense boulders, crashing through thorny shrubs, crossing the creek many times and sliding along steep slippery rock faces. Many times we had to backtrack and find another way, on the other side of the creek. All this with a full overnight pack, which gets caught in branches and has a tendency to pull in unexpected directions, makes for a dangerous and often scary hike or climb. Five miles of this is utterly exhausting.

Here is our camp:

(Click image to enlarge). You can see the flat area where we had pitched our tents (red arrow).

Look at the palm grove in the background. It had burned some years before, and the trunks of the trees are all blackened, the old fronds burned off. However, when growth came back after the fire, new fronds developed, and the wilted ones are once again forming the characteristic yellow bushes below the living leaves – until the next fire.

We spent the night next to the creek, the full moon as bright as a reading light. We actually tested that and Devin was able to read. We made a fire in a little natural fire cave (green arrow), Devin cooked one of his gourmet wilderness dinners, and we turned in by 8:00, when the fire had died down, it got cold and there was nothing left to do but sleep.

The sun does not come up until 7:00am, so it was a long night in the tent. Since we had only planned for one night out, we knew we had to summit and come back to the camp by noon, to be able to make it back out by dark at 5:00pm. It was very obvious that we didn’t have enough time for a summit attempt again this time and we committed to an exploratory hike up the ridge (blue arrow).

You can see our attempt on the map where I made waypoints 003, 004, 005 and 006, carefully marking spots in the wilderness in order not to get lost on the way down. In the desert, it is very easy to get lost and end up on the wrong ridge, far from where you want to be at best, and possibly in a dangerous position with no way out. The light also changes the way things look. Waypoints are important for finding your way back.

We climbed up a steep and rugged ridge, of course no trails and maybe no human boots before us in years. After about 45 minutes we reached a natural turn-around point. We knew we didn’t have time to go further, and looking up looked forbidding. Here is Devin at the end point:

Looking down from our ridge into the valley where we came from, taken with a zoom, we can see our camp site (red arrow) where our stashed gear waits for us when we return.

When we finally got back to the camp after four more rough hours climbing and stumbling down the creek, when I fell twice with a full pack, once getting my head submerged in water, we were thoroughly exhausted.

We concluded that next time we’d attack the peak right from the parking lot, going on the black curved line on the right side of the map above, over the false peak and the saddle to the peak. I think this can be done in five hours up and another five down with a daypack, without having to trek all the way up the canyon first to come from behind.

A tough ridge is a tough ridge, no matter what side of the mountain we climb.

Next year, Indianhead, next year.