Bushwhack up a hill

I had been meaning to bushwhack up a hill that Kevin and I had hiked up with Sara and Sammy years ago. It's a small hill at the mouth of Hunter Canyon overlooking SR92 that illegal border crossers would use as an overlook. I took four dogs with me on this: Sammy, Sadie, Zeke and Minnie. I was hoping I could find the original trail from years ago, but apparently the 2011 fire and flood washed most of the trail away. I couldn't find a trace of the old trail. Everything was overgrown with waist-high Lovegrass.

The hike up the hill started at the first pull-out on the right side of the forest road. We crossed the dry drainage and just went up the ridgeline, heading to the peak. The grass was so tall that I only could see the top of all the dogs' ears as they frolicked around. They certainly enjoyed the romp and I enjoyed being able to take them somewhere where they wouldn't bother anyone, but walking up this hill was not easy: the tall grass hid all the many loose rocks.

There was no sign of any old trail, either. It used to meander up the side of the hill along the forest boundary. The peak was popular for the border crossers to use as a look-out about ten years ago, as the highway below does get patrolled by the USBP. But today I saw little trash and what I did find had been there a while.

There was, however, a lot of underwear at the peak, and I will now call that peak Underwear Hill. I picked up a few rusty cans to throw out back home.

We rested a bit, took in the scenery. The sky around us was various shades of grey all around. One gets a nice view of Hunter Canyon from this small hill. And then we walked down, taking a slightly different route down until we got to the drainage and took the drainage route back to the car. This was only a two-hour hike but all the dogs got some exercise and everyone seemed happy to get out.