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1301. Cuyamaca Loop (10/22/22)
Hikers (0):
Distance: 17 miles
Rating: 4 difficulty, 8 beauty
Park info: Cuyamaca Rancho State Park near Julian
Write-up by Steve -- Pictures by Helen, Qi, Giulia and Steve
A few months before the hike, Southwest Airlines had $39 tickets to/from San Jose to San Diego. I took this as a sign to take vacation and booked a week in San Diego. A few weeks later I started planning what I'd actually do down there and came up with a series of hikes each day. Since I knew this popular peak would be one of them, decided to bag it on a Saturday and call it a hike.
Originally planned to make it a post-INCH INCH hike, but Peter had a conniption about keeping INCH totally closed when I suggested he put his also-post-INCH Charleston hike on the INCH page. This was a bit of poor communication, as I'd been telling everyone I'd keep using the page, but that was news to Peter. Oh well, there is a software solution to all problems.
As the trip approached I started figuring out the lodging based on the hikes. Realized it would be easier and cheaper to just camp in Cuyamaca. That's not my normal default, but it was perfect for this situation, and the "second bag is free" on Southwest. Kendra and Christina heard about this and asked to crash my campsite which was plenty large enough. They couldn't find another location for two days. By that time, I'd planned the rest of my trip, and realized the next peak (Palomar) was convenient to the campground, so might as well just stay two nights as well. So they booked the same campsite the next night and we agree to share both nights. Win-win!
A few days before the hike, Sophie and Rainer had to drop out to travel to Belgium. Similarly last minute, Kendra realized she'd booked her rental car in the wrong airport and it would be prohibitively expensive to get one in San Diego. So we were down in seven.
After a day of hiking some nearby peaks, I arrived at the campground to find Christina already setting up camp and, thankfully, there was another good/flat area for my tent under a big tree. The campground was conveniently near the showers, which I was enthusiastic to use. . .only to find out they take tokens and the token machine was empty. So I trudged down to the ranger station to cash in my $2 in quarters (which I'd purposely gotten for showers) for tokens. The ranger confirmed that the showers used to run on quarters but they had changed over the season. Grrrr. But I got my two-minute super efficient shower.
Christina knows how to car camp and, since she drove, had a carload of camping goodies. The star of the show turned out to be a propane fire pit. Heat and light were both welcome as we had some beer before the next day's hike.
There was no further attrition the next morning and everyone was on time and ready to go. We headed out of the campground entrance, crossed the street, and headed up to Stonewall Peak. This route was heavily switch-backed, so we were to the summit relatively quickly.
Could see the rest of the peaks easily from this rocky summit. Snapped some pictures and headed down. This provided an opportunity to confirm the only ambiguous location along the route to the summit to those coming up. It also let me run ahead to find a geocache which hadn't been found in two years.
Reached a point down in the meadow between Stonewall and Middle that said "do not enter" despite the fact that it was on my route. I kept going to see if the next junction avoided crossing the fence. It didn't, but I saw another group on the "wrong" side. Turned around and met up with the main group, where we proceeded to cross under the fence and follow the well-worn trail to a bridge.
At the currently unnecessary bridge, the route turned into a grassy field. There was no obvious trail there but we went on. Eventually beat through a little brush and detoured to the road to connect back to our official route to Middle Peak. All things considered, it was fine.
The route up to Middle Peak was also nicely switchbacked, but the clouds had come out as predicted, and we hiked in limited visibility for the rest of the day.
Alan had warned us that he had not found a route to the last segment to Middle Peak in the past. I knew it was regularly bagged, so there must be a route. As it turned out, the route was pretty easy to follow just after the beginning, which is behind/left of a large water supply tank near the highest point on the official road/trail.
Left a big encouraging arrow and also called back to highlight there was, indeed, a route. Added a few rocks to the existing cairns and one arrow on a downed-tree walk while making the long journey to the summit. Due to the clouds, it always seemed like I was at the summit, but the trail kept going. . .
The summit was a rocky area with a register. We had been socked in clouds the whole time, but even if we weren't, there wouldn't be much to see. So I'd call that a win, since we got cooler the temperatures in this case.
Once back on the road, it was very easy going all the way to the paved road leading to Cuyamaca. I was flying both up and down, stopping for caches, most of which I couldn't find.
While the route showed the way to the summit, I looped around to the overlook and headed back directly toward the summit. Found the highest point, sat on top, took some pictures and kept going. Found the tourist peak after that and, while heading back down, ran into Christina and Giulia, who thought they'd already hit the summit. That was all resolved and everyone made it one way or another. Lots of space up there.
I headed off because I had several old caches to look for, which take time. Indeed, it wasn't too long until people started passing me. Fortunately, everyone held up near Japacha. I did some recon and called back once I found the unofficial route to the summit. This peak was a bit of beater. It was not nearly as bad as Middle Peak, but it was slightly harder to follow (both to and from). Got to the summit, then other's showed up, but Hong and Qi were just out of sight talking about the final push. They eventually made it. That's when I learned Helen and Vicki had decided not to do the extension to Japacha, resulting in everyone only getting 17 miles of credit instead of 20. But that was the official plan.
The route back was mostly downhill so everyone made good time. I turned off to take the trail back to the campground so I could take a short shower and change into something warm. Everyone else, including Christina, had their warm gear at the trailhead parking.
We only had about an hour until sunset and also predicted rain. Awesomely, we had lots of warm food as everyone had fire. Enjoyed both boazi, bratwurst, and beer, not to mention tasty dessert items. The old INCH spirit persists in both eating and hiking.
Back at the camp, enjoyed some remaining beers by the heat of Christina's fire pit. Eventually a drizzle started and we scampered to the tents. Later there was heavy rain, which makes for good sleeping. I'd brought a heavy four-season tent that had not yet gotten any action for its intended purpose, so was glad to finally put it through the paces. The drawback was a wet (exterior) tent the next day. So it sat in the back seat of the rental car for two days, carefully positioned to get hot and dry out before the flight back to San Jose. . .
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