Cowles Mountain, San Diego Hike

So the weekend after Vegas, my roommate had a spontaneous idea to go down to San Diego for one night.  She had to drop something off nearby so being the supportive roomie, I went with her.  We went to Fluxx which was pretty fun;  we got to dance through the night mostly to hip hop with a little bit of edm.  Anyways, we decided to go hiking Saturday morning [4.11.15] before heading home.

We didn’t make it to bed until 3:30 am or so… set alarm to wake up at 6:30 am, out the door by 7am. That was the plan.  We both woke up early but decided to sleep a little more and didn’t make it out of the house until 8-8:30 am.  We had to leave by 11 am, so that didn’t leave time for the specific hike I had in mind. Boo… but I will make it back down to conquer it at some point… *note to self:  it was a waterfall hike.

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We ended up hiking Cowles Mountain because I read a review that it was short and a lot of city people do it as a quick morning hike/ jog… and it’s the highest peak in San Diego.  Well, getting there took time.  There’s a lot of trails at this mountain too, I believe, and I think we chose the wrong one.  We parked at a residential area along Shatung Dr/ Big Rock Rd, starting in Santee.  We only made it as far as 3 miles round trip… 650 ft elevation gain in 1 hr 20 mins.  We were already running past time so we had to turn around before making it to the top.  The view along the way wasn’t that great; it was mostly the 52 hwy and some dry, brown mountains.  I think the exhaustion and lack of scenery got to us with this hike…

I know San Diego is supposed to be pretty for hiking; it’s what I hear and I’ve done one (Torrey Pines), but this was just a less-than-pleasurable experience.  I’m still glad we got out into nature and exercised a bit though.

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