In the San Diego area for the weekend, I got up early with my wife as she prepared to head out to ref a volleyball tournament. I headed south towards the border with Mexico to tag a few summits, primarily the Otay Mountain Wilderness HP. I had been to Otay Mtn years ago, but had neglected the Wilderness HP at that time, and never wrote a TR. The weather was mixed with cool temps and partial clouds, but it made for fine hiking conditions and I enjoyed it much better than that first visit when it was much warmer.
Otay Mountain/Otay Mountain Wilderness
Both of these are close to drive ups, even in low-clearance vehicles. The Otay Mtn Truck Trail is in pretty decent shape and I had no trouble driving the van on it. Starting from the north off Otay Lakes Rd, I drove almost six miles until I reached
a junction
northwest of the Wilderness HP. The rougher road leading
to the highpoint requires high-clearance, but the hike was only a little
more than half a mile in length. 
The top is a rock outcrop with a small
solar-powered instrument located there, not sure if it still works. Oddly, the
road I hiked and which seems perfectly legal to drive, goes right through the
Wilderness boundary as defined on wilderness.net and depicted on the topo map.
Because one can actually circumnavigate the highpoint in a vehicle, it shouldn't
really be within the Wilderness boundary. There is a second point, slightly
lower and just south of Otay Mtn that used to be considered the Wilderness HP,
but it too, suffers from the same problem of being able to drive around it. I
suspect the Wilderness boundary will get an update sometime in the futher at
which time a new Wilderness HP will need to be selected. 
The views from
the top were quite nice, looking into Mexico to 
the south where
fog partially filled the valleys. To 
the west lies the higher Otay Mtn
where I headed next.
Back at the van, I drove a little more than a mile west on the main road to
another junction forking off to Otay Mountain's telecom facilities. I
hiked this easy quarter mile to the summit where the highpoint is found outside
the fenced areas in a 
clump of rocks to the south. I then wandered
through the mild brush to the south in search of the "old" Wilderness HP (called
"Otay South on PB), finding 
a duck but little else. Just for fun, I
continued scrambling 
down the slope through the brush to return to the
van, though it probably would have been easier to go back via the road.
2,712ft
To the west of Otay Mountain lies the Otay County Open Space Preserve, for which there appears to be almost no information online. It seems to be a patchwork of federal and state lands with a portion managed as the Otay Mountain Ecological Reserve by the CA Dept of Fish and Wildlife and most of the rest BLM lands. A Border Patrol agent had stopped to check on me when I was doing the Wilderness HP, and when he found I was just out hiking he recommended a trail to the west of Otay Mountain that starts from an old
concrete bunker.
I found on PB that this leads out to Peak 2,712ft, within the OSP, Terry Flood
having provided a short TR and Mike Sullivan a GPX track. I decided to go
check it out and found it an enjoyable hike, a little less than a mile each
way. From the truck trail, 
a road leads out to two
additional bunkers that appear to be old jails of
some sort. There is a larger one down the slope to the west from the road but
I didn't go check that one out. The road ends at the bunkers where
a clipped use trail
continues to Peak 2,712ft, about 300ft below the starting elevation
at the truck trail. There were many discarded plastic water jugs and
bottles, as well as a few small day packs, clothing and other stuff cast off
by folks coming over the border. The sometimes overgrown trail can be hard to
follow at times, but for the most part it works nicely to keep one from
floundering in the heavier brush that covers much of the landscape.
The summit has little prominence, but it has a decent view overlooking
the OSP and the sprawling city of Tijuana to 
the southwest.
Another summit within the preserve about 2mi 
to the WNW caught my
attention and I looked it up on PB while I rested atop Peak 2,712ft. On the way
back I picked up two discarded daypacks and filled them with empty bottles left
along the trail. Not yet pristine, but at least it's a little cleaner now.
Peak 1,750ft
I drove another 6mi west on the
Otay Mtn Truck Trail, descending from
3000ft to about 800ft where a minor dirt road forks off to the north. This minor
road was a bit too rough for the van, so I 
parked the van off the truck
trail and 
hiked the road, following another of Mike Sullivan's GPX
tracks picked up off the PB website. It turns out that this "preserve" is open
to OHVs, 
shooting and most forms of recreation - about the only thing
being preserved is the land from development. I followed 
one road (a
steep 4WD road to be sure) up from the southeast and went down another to the
southwest, the two routes converging at the bottom in 
O'Neal Canyon at
the base of the mountain. Some easy scrambling gets one atop
the summit rocks with 
nice views - more than 500ft of
prominence on this one. The outing was less than 4mi roundtrip, taking about an
hour and half to complete.
Otay Mesa
Only a quarter mile further down the road, the truck trail meets pavement at Alta Rd. Quite to my surprise, there was
a locked gate barring my exit with
a No Trespassing sign facing Alta Rd. Evidently this isn't considered an access
point for the truck trail though there are perfectly legal ways to drive on both
sides of the gate. I really didn't want to drive back 14mi of the truck
trail to return the way I came and wondered how long I might have to wait for a
Border Patrol agent to come by this way. I figured I should at least check out
the collection of chained locks holding the gate closed, and was elated to find
one of them unlatched, allowing me 
an easy exit. After driving through
the open gate, I replaced the locks the way I'd found them and headed off in
search of one last summit, Otay Mesa. I drove south and west for about 2mi
before 
pulling off the pavement of Enrico Fermi Rd at the east end of
SR11 where 
it dead-ends against a high mound that constitutes the
highpoint. It's not much of a summit and 
the views are weak, at best,
but it's a short, easy hike to the
top that appears to be public lands. It was 12:30p by now and I decided to call
it a day and head back to Ranch Bernardo where I was staying for the weekend...
Continued...