Mount Woodson

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from Lake Poway, nearish La Jolla

Locate the trailhead.

I only drove to La Jolla, so can't say how to get there, but Lake Poway is on the map. It's a short trail, but can get hot so we meant to head off quite early. We did manage to get around to going downhill before it started to feel particularly hot. They've certainly put together a lot of trails for a place that hadn't had a trail until 1980, but there's usually trail signs, too.

The view going up the mountain, already the ocean and islands can be seen.
Not quite the first view of ocean along the trail. I'm told this wasn't particularly visible until fire came through a few years ago.

There were a few funky shaped bits of pink granite around. It seemed to be turning into shells, in a way, in places. Besides this one, the top features a wave of stone everyone but me was taking photos of.

California's weak pink granite falling into huge flakes.
The local pink granite, a rock that isn't as much harder than the local sandstone as expected.


Somewhat recent fire has thinned out the vegetation though most of the roots are throwing more sticks up. I'm told there was no view from here and various places further up before. Now you can look out and see all sorts of new houses being built on mountain tops putting trees around themselves. Sometimes they have islands of grass around them too.

Forground of burned bush branches, background of new houses on hilltops and San Diego.
A peek at San Diego (the shadow at the edge of the ocean) through burned twigs.

Being late in the season gets a different set of flowers than earlier. Not so many that tend toward bushes can be seen.

Live flower on a dying twig.
A small flower on a twiggy thing of a bush that seemed dead otherwise.

The top of the mountain is quite overtaken with antennas of various sort. Here are some views from the top.

The view headed southeast.
Off to the southeast from the mountain top. More mountain with some nice round boulders all over it and the highway the trail continues on to can be seen.

The view headed northwest.
To the northwest, a reservoir can be seen among the rolling hills and the valley full of housing. More city is by the ocean and way out to the left a bit of island can be picked out.

The view headed to the west.
Black mountain is probably the black on with its own set of antennas. Catalina Island can still be seen looking westward. The top of the mountain doesn't seem to have burned although there was plenty of burning shortly below.

The view headed to the south.
Off to the south, more islands are seen as well as San Diego. We could see all the way to Mexico on this day. Some of the far off haze might be smoke.

Me on top of Mt. Woodson.
I didn't escape being photographed, and with my own camera! Behind me, antennas aplenty and beside me Shachi's hiking sticks. She's addicted to them now.




©2008 Valerie Norton
Posted 22 November 2008
location: 14692 Lake Poway Rd, Poway, CA 92064, USA

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