[First Snow Hike!!] - Cuyamaca Peak - Descanso, CA

I did I my first hike, through snow, today (Feb 16th, 2008). We hiked up the famous Cuyamaca Peak (supposedly, the second highest peak in San Diego county) in Descanso, about 40 mi East of San Diego city. The trail head was at the Paso Picacho camp ground, in Rancho Cuyamaca SP , at an elevation of about 4800ft and the final peak was at about 6500ft. So the hike was an elevation change of about 1650ft over ~3.5mi (round trip hike distance ~7mi)

Hiking through snow was an interesting challenge, a lot of fun and definitely something I would love to do again. I did take away something from the experience though - like, even though kicking up snow and embedding your shoes in it seems like fun, initially, the real fun starts when they soak up and you can no longer feel your toes anymore :) or that, walking on a thinner sheet of watery snow can be much more challenging than doing so in a couple feet of it. Overall (to put it in more "san-diegan" terms), it seemed a lot like hiking through a sandy beach (a cold and steeply slanting one, that is!)

The bad part, I forgot to juice up my camera batteries before I left, so, I couldn't snap up as many photos or experiment with too many modes either. So, anyways, here's what I did manage to capture...
View from the peak, looking South West, towards San Diego

View from the peak, looking south

View from a midway point, looking west


United we stand!


Lake Cuyamaca, as seen, from half-way up the trail.


United we (sometimes) fall? (heck, I just liked the contrast of colors in this one!)


Interesting tree bark hollow (If only I had paid more attention to choosing a less noisy background, this could have been somethin' else!)




Aah, there we go! Now, ya stay right there, till christmas ;-)