Scorcher

It was a scorcher today. The temperature got all the way up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

Duane and I decided to put tomorrow's hike off for a few days in hopes of cooler weather. He's going to work tomorrow and we're going to take Tuesday off and go hiking while our son is in school.

Black Mountain Revisited

Duane and I decided to do a much longer hike with significantly more elevation gain this morning. I had hiked Black Mountain once before with mentor Deb and fellow hiker Matt. It was a nice hike, but Duane was unable to join us that Sunday morning. So I thought this would be a good hike for him. He would get to see something new, and next week, he would take me someplace new. (We're planning to do the Saratoga Gap hike that I previously missed next week.)



We got to the trailhead, which is located near the end of Rhus Ridge Road, by 7:45 am. We readied our hiking poles and packs to go and took off. As before, there was a few hundred feet of a short warm up, before we started to climb 600 feet in less than a mile. It was a beautiful day. Warm, though not terribly hot. The trail had plenty of shade for most of the way. We reached the trail junction at the Duveneck Windmill pasture area: left towards Rancho San Antonio and left towards the top of Black Mountain and Montebello Road. We turned left and started on a series of gentle switchbacks up the mountain underneath woodland oak forests. The wildflowers are mostly gone now, though we saw plenty of spider webs.



The last mile or so of the Black Mountain trail is quite steep. But at last we reached Montebello Road and the antenna farm that sits next to the junction of the trail and road. We had planned to turn back, as before, when a couple of hikers told us that there was a nice place to sit down with 360 degree views a few hundred feet ahead. So we pressed on and were glad that we did.

We found an outcropping of jagged rocks, where we found a rock to sit on, ate our sandwiches and enjoyed the 360 degree views of the Santa Cruz Mountains and Santa Clara Valley. We also found the USGS summit marker in that outcropping of rocks. Oddly, it doesn't state the elevation as we would have expected, and uses the Latin word for Black - Niger - to name the mountain.

We also seem to keep bumping into people who are training for Half Dome. We met a couple of men who were training for Half Dome lower down on the trail, and then again at the summit, we met another couple who were also training.

After about a half an hour break at the summit, we headed back down the mountain. By the time we began our descent the temperature was quite a bit hotter, and on the unshaded portions of the trail I sometimes felt like a hot dog in a solar cooker. Still it was a beautiful day and the views from many parts of the trail as well as the summit are stupendous. We arrived at the bottom of the trail, nine plus miles later, feeling pretty good and not much worse for wear.

Returning to Castle Rock

Will we ever summit Half Dome?

I don't know, but I do know that if we don't get some longish hikes in, we'll never be prepared to go.

So, in order to keep our options open, we hiked Castle Rock State Park this morning. We traveled the same path that we had when we hiked with Team in Training. First out to the Castle Rock Falls Overlook via the Saratoga Gap Trail. Then, once we reached Castle Rock Trail Camp, we turned back on to the Ridge Trail and headed towards Goat Rock, and then back to the parking lot.

We took our son with us and he did very well and enjoyed climbing on all of the rocks along the way. Spring, of course, is long gone so there were very few wildflowers to see. The temperature was definitely hotter than in the Spring, but it was not overwhelmingly hot. There was, of course, plenty of shade to be had, except in a few spots.

This was not a long hike, but it did get us back in the game. We did feel that we had lost a bit of our edge since last Spring, but I think if we persist, it will come back.