Stonewall Peak – Kathy Nida

Two weeks ago, I signed up for a hike I didn’t think I could finish. I had done 12.5 miles the week before, and it felt like my limit. I was significantly tired the next day, and sore too…so when I signed up for the three peaks hike (Middle, Cuyamaca, and Stonewall), I figured I would just skip the last one…the leader had set the hike up so we didn’t have to do all three.

I mapped the hike out using Map My Hike, but it did add some mileage to it…so it’s probably not exact. The leader had it at 14.4 miles, and this one is over 15…

We started at the parking spot near Milk Ranch Road, heading up the switchbacks on the fire road to Middle Peak. From the parking area, here’s Stonewall Peak…

And Cuyamaca in the distance…

Here’s the fire road…it was a warm day…

There were some flowers I hadn’t seen on previous hikes…

Middle Peak used to be covered with big trees, but the Cedar Fire in 2003 swept through this area in a pretty devastating way. Lots of undergrowth is coming back, but most of the trees are dead…

It wasn’t an easy climb, and this group hiked really fast…

Here’s Stonewall again from higher up the peak…you can just see our cars parked in the turn in the road.

And Stonewall again, through the burned trees. There was a good breeze all day, which was good…

More flowers…there were LOTS of these.

And dead trees…

A big fire road…

You can imagine what this might have looked like when the trees were alive. I actually hiked this area the weekend before the Cedar Fire, and then went back about two weeks after the fires…it was hard to see.

And yet, the dead trees have a fascinating presence…stark though it might be.

This is looking off towards Stonewall again, but closer to the top of Middle Peak.

There is no actual trail to this peak…you can bushwhack it if you like…

More flowers…they flourish in the full sun without trees shading them.

We reached the highest point of the trail, and then headed around the western side of Middle Peak…

This is the view to the west, which wouldn’t have been visible prior to October 2003…

Another view…

We headed south towards Cuyamaca Peak, following the Conejo Trail for most of it…

This is looking toward the east…

The trail was rocky now, and sometimes there were trees (some significantly large ones) over the trail…

But new trees were growing by the trail…

Not sure what direction this is…maybe north?

The wildflowers were everywhere on this section of trail, truly beautiful riotous color…

And long vistas of blue sky…

Even more pine trees lining the trail, close enough that you had to edge through them at times…makes you wonder what will happen to the trail as they get bigger…

It’s nice to see them growing…

This is the view of the slope looking north…once covered with trees…

Some berries?

This is one of the smaller trees I climbed over…some required assistance, but this one was on my own…it attacked my pants…had to sew that hole up…

Pretty flowers…

This was where the Conejo Trail meets the Cuyamaca Peak fire road to the peak itself.

Looking up the fire road…

There are still some trees alive on Cuyamaca…

Here we are at the top of Cuyamaca Peak, at 6512′, the second tallest peak in San Diego County.

I was last here in November, with snow…

We sat and ate lunch and communed with the iridescent green beatles…

This was over where the antennas are…looks like they’re building new ones.

Flowers and butterflies live at the top…

We then took the fire road down…

Down, down, down…

There’s Stonewall in the distance…the third peak on our challenge…

Still lots of dead trees…

So we got to the Paso Picacho Campground at the base of Cuyamaca and Stonewall peaks, and we rested a bit (bathrooms! with black widows!)…and it was then I had to make a decision about the last peak. Hell. I was still moving. It was hot…but it seemed lame to stop there. Some people wanted a longer rest, but I just wanted to get UP the last peak…so a few of us headed out…below you can see Cuyamaca Peak from the trail going up Stonewall, with Paso Picacho down across the road.

There’s Stonewall from below…

The hardest parts were tired legs and the heat…it was about 85 degrees at this point. I needed almost all of my 3 liters on this hike.

This is the view to the south…you can see the highway on the right side…

More dead trees…these creaked in the wind.

This trail is really hot and dry.

But beautiful flowers lined the trail…I last hiked this one in November as well…

Here’s Cuyamaca from the west trail on Stonewall…

And here’s Middle from Stonewall…

And there’s the peak I’m heading for…

These trees creaked in a very scary way…

Trees hung over the trail even up here…

Here’s the view from the top…there are steps going up to the peak and info maps up there to show you what you’re looking at…

I didn’t take a lot of pictures on the way down…we went down the back way and across some meadows with trails that were barely clear…pulling foxtails out of our shoes and socks became a regular stopping point…

At some point on a hike this long you are just trying to get done…although the meadows were very pretty…

That’s the Trout Pond in the distance (notice the electrical poles…must be approaching “civilization”…

It was a long tiring hike. It was a challenge, though, and it felt good finishing the whole thing. I think it took about 7 hours total…we stopped for maybe 40 minutes total…once at the top of Cuyamaca, once in the campground, and once at the top of Stonewall. No ticks, no blisters…just sore muscles and tired body. Definitely worth the trip.

I went to sleep early last night because I knew I was going on a hike today. I shouldn’t have wasted my energy. My overactive depressoid brain woke me up two hours early and then fussed over stupid shit and wouldn’t allow me to go back to sleep. And just so you know, putting your pillow over your head works for blocking light and the noise of cats licking their nether regions, but it doesn’t do shit for shutting up an overly active brain. It’s like having a 2-year-old in the house. They don’t know it’s the one morning in the week when you can sleep in. They just know it’s morning and they’re bored.

Stupid brain. Maybe I should just take sleep off my wish list. I hope for 6+ hours a night. I rarely get it. Not by choice.

Anyway, I got all my hiking stuff ready and headed out for the meeting spot…we drove out to Cuyamaca Rancho State Park to climb Stonewall Peak…

I’ve climbed this one before, at least once, maybe twice…right after the divorce, I hiked a lot with the Sierra Club local singles group. I was young then…no really, I was. This hike today was with a local women’s hiking group.

The weather was cool, but not freezing, and the day was beautiful, blue skies and bright autumnal weather.

Great views…sometimes the weather conspires against, especially this time of year, but today was perfect.

There is an 850-foot elevation gain from the parking lot to the top…

It took us an hour to do the first 2 miles…we weren’t walking super fast, but not slow either…

We weren’t even halfway through the hike at this point, but we stopped and ate, and then headed down for the back half of the trail…

Instead of going back the way we came, we went down the northern end of the peak…

Which was gorgeous, despite being full of trees that had burned in the Cedar Fire of 2003, which raged through this area…in fact, I hiked another peak in this area the week before, and then three weeks after, went through (illegally…because fires were still burning inside the trunks of some of the oak trees) and was devastated by the loss of the big oaks. I have pictures somewhere of before and after. So walking through a valley like this is a little like walking through a graveyard…

A beautiful graveyard…and then you notice these little guys…

Tiny little trees shaded and protected, growing…and you see some that were burned halfway up the trunk, but survived and seem to be thriving.

And at some point, the brain stops remembering all the stupid shit that woke you up before 6 AM and it’s just staring at the trees and the path and the oak leaves that had fallen on the ground and the patterns in the rings of the trees that had been cut to clear the trail post-fire. And the clouds in the sky and the smell of the skunkweed and the burnt log that looked like a bear and the taste of the sandwich and the sight of an expansive view. And the brain stops being such a fucking 2-year-old and starts to resemble Kathy again.

Some of the trees look dead but have new branches coming up from the trunks, surrounding the old, dead wood.

And some parts just seem completely untouched by disaster.

It’s a beautiful area, no matter what. Charcoal and all. Five miles, a little less than three hours. My brain left all the stupid behind and I communed with nature and a few humans. If I could do that and draw every day, I’d probably be almost human pretty damn quickly.

Not really a plan I can stick to at the moment…but I can certainly try to add a few hikes a month to my therapeutic plan.

I came home and rushed through school stuff and grocery shopping and we went out to dinner with mom, because dad was still in an airport in Texas…managed meditation and cutting out of Wonder Under. Midnight approves of the newly cleaned-off table (OK, I did not get everything cleared off, but quite a bit of it, plus I washed the table runner that she loves to deposit her hair on, so that’s a plus).

Meditation talked about communing with our own minds as being helpful with knowing what’s in the minds of others. I’m usually pretty good at that, although the few times I’ve been slammed by NOT knowing were particularly devastating. Mr. Meditation talked about Being There for the experience…I did that successfully this weekend, I think…mostly. I just need to translate it into my whole life, and maybe kick my brain back into a mode where sadness doesn’t overwhelm me. I had my moments today, trust me. I felt it in the post-hike exhaustion in the car…my brain crept back in and was trying to drag me down. In the grocery store. On the phone with a friend. It’s a relentless beast. But he says that I can better understand where people are coming from, empathize with them…he talked about most people conceptualizing, thinking about how they THOUGHT someone would feel, instead of KNOWING how they feel, and how this practice helps with that. I got caught in that this year…someone assuming they knew what I was thinking and feeling, and actually ignoring what I was saying and all the evidence that was there to make assumptions about what I thought and what I would do. I hate that. I do have a pretty good sense of what I think and feel, and I’m pretty good at saying it. I appreciate those who respect me enough to actually have the conversation with me before assuming they know what I would do. I had a couple really respectful, human, responsible, and mature conversations today…and it reminded me that is how they should all go…not behind my back, talking to other people, guessing at what I think. Fucking ask me, man. I’ll tell you. And you don’t have to agree with me, but if we’re talking about MY mind and how it works, I hate to tell you, I know better than any other person on the planet.

I did an hour of cutting…

Look any different? Fuck no. It will. Maybe.

I’m exhausted…physically, emotionally, whatever. I’m going to bed early again. If my brain really loves me, it will let me sleep.

Tag: Stonewall Peak

Three Peaks in Cuyamaca

Hiking and the Brain