Strawberries and Friends
My six pack of peaks with a new twist this year. I decided to start out the year by completing one peak from each of six different challenges. Next up, the SoCal Challenge as I made my way back down through California from Oregon.
Strawberry is #3 of 6 for my third hike of the year and third peak in this challenge.
January 10 – What an amazing morning on trail for my 3rd hike of the year. Strawberry Peak via Red Box Canyon, in the San Gabriel Mouintains, Southern California. Strawberry Peak is one if the peaks in the SoCal Six-Pack of Peaks Challenge. Only a 1-hour 20-minute drive this morning from my campsite in Soledad Canton, Acton, CA.
There were tons of hikers out today. The Red Box parking lot was completely full when I arrived at about 7:30 am and the lot across the road was filling up fast too. A National Parks Pass is required for parking. The plan this morning was to just do a nice and easy 7.2 mile out and back. As I was prepping my gear I noticed a few hiking friends (Eric and Yani, to name a few) that were there doing a group hike up Strawberry Peak. Not sure why, but I was so excited to see them on trail that my body got energized and I ended up doing basically a run walk (mostly fast walk) up to the summit.
I must have passed more than a dozen hikers on the way up. And was averaging about a 3-mph pace when I ran into two more hiking friends (Mary and Vicki) as they were nearing the first of three false summits. So, I slowed down and hiked the remainder of the ascent with them. Even with the slow down for the final ½ mile or so, I still managed to make it to the summit in about 1-hour 30-minutes. A pretty good pace for me. Speed really isn’t my thing anymore but seeing so many hiker friends gave me a lot of energy and I just went.
Mary, Vicki and I hung out at the summit for about 10 or 15 minutes. There were about 5 or 6 other hikers there and more coming. We had clear skies, but it was a little chilly and windy, so we headed down right after we took a few photos. The descent went by very quickly as the three of us talked and shared stories. Also had the pleasure of running into another hiking friend (Jenny Huang) on the way down.
I finished this hike with right around 7.4 miles and a total of 1894 feet in elevation gain.
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