In the quest to find the next new place to leave footprints on a mountain, I settled for Mount Gower. Now I’ve spent a considerable amount of time on Cowles Mountain, but it’s just too popular for my taste. And the last time I was on Iron Mountain I ran into some litter that just irritated the crap out of me. After looking around what’s in San Diego, a trip to Mount Gower was planned with a co-worker.
The Mount Gower Open Space Preserve is just down the road in Ramona. From my house, it’s a bit of a drive to get to, but as I’ve been told, the further away and more isolated a place is, the less popular (read: less people) it is as well. After scouring over internet maps and guides for the place and Google satellite images, we had a plan in place to hit the summit. We arrived at the preserve right before 9am and the thermometer in my car read in the mid-40s. Now I’ve joked about not needing cold weather clothing because Under Armor cold gear is set below 50 degrees and most of the time I’m hiking in 50+ degree weather (one of the joys of living in San Diego). As I stepped out of the car, I noticed that the temperature outside was pleasant and not the frozen hell I expected. We were ready in a few minutes and set off on the trail.
Since the Preserve is open to mountain bikes, horses and hikers, there is a significant amount of horse crap on the trail to avoid for the first mile or so. After that we started heading further down the trail and it was evident that there weren’t too many horses that had been there. After a bit we made it to the end of the trail that was visible and wandered a bit before accepting some directions from a local hiker who’s on the trail 2-3 times a week. Of course since the trail from that point to the summit isn’t the most visible we soon resorted to searching for the small cairns left to indicate the trail. After the occasional scaling of a rock face to get to the next level, we arrived at what we thought was the summit. Since no one else had checked in there before, I of course added the summit to Foursquare. On the way down I was informed that the spot we stopped wasn’t the summit, but the northern peak close to it. Either way, we had 4 miles under our belts that morning and were on the way out with no designs on going back to find it.
Once I got home I checked the trail recorded by Runmeter (here)and then checked the terrain version of the map to discover we had not reached the summit. Now there’s a part of me that wants to go back out there and hike it again to actually hit the summit. Since it’s almost 8 miles in length, I’ll save that for another day.
El Cajon Mountain (El Capitan) is on the horizon. Now all I need is time set aside to get there. Soon.