to kick off the 2020 to 6 pack of Peaks San Diego Challenge, my usual hiking buddy and I sat out for El Cajon mountain on Saturday the eighth.
It was great weather out and there was plenty of street parking available. We made really good time up the mountain, enjoying the varying ups and downs that repeats throughout most of the trail. We ended up going on a short detour to the “Old Mine” that was less than a quarter mile off of the main trail. I would say it’s worth it to check it out, basically three tunnels dug into the side of the hill that were seemingly abandoned after a short while. AllTrails shows the last third of a mile up the mountain as very steep, but honestly I didn’t think it was that bad, definitely not a 40% grade as stated. The views from the top were amazing and we spent a long time checking out the views of the next five peaks using PeakFinder. After a while we headed back down and made the long drive back to Orange County.
This was a pretty fun trail to hike, definitely a good introduction to the challenge. All in all I would say that this wasn’t too difficult, but I’ve been hiking and running more miles than I can count each week so there’s that too.
The only cons of this trail would be:
1 – there were quite a lot of little swarms of gnats flying around in the first half of the trail up the mountain. Nothing overwhelming but definitely annoying
2 – Not a Con depending on who you ask, but there really are quite a lot of repeated ascents and descents throughout the hike, so it’s not straight uphill the whole time. I know some people don’t like the alternating elevation changes but I thought it was great to mix it up.
Responses
I like this hike as well. I don’t really think it deserves the reputation as “the toughest hike in San Diego.”