Wed, Jul 1, 2020
![]() |
![]() |
Story | Photos / Slideshow | Map | GPX | Profile |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
I arrived soon after 4p at the TH on Mattie Rd, finding it quite
popular and nearly full. Having ridden my bike from the
Kon Tiki Inn
where we were staying, I locked it up at the TH and set out
on foot on the
Lower Road, the most direct route up towards the
peak. The road is well-maintained but really dusty. It travels up
a seasonally
dry gully with some fine oaks draped in spanish moss,
poison oak covering much of the ground. Looking
upslope, grass
mixed with brush and oaks seemed to dominate, giving me some hope
of avoiding poison oak in the cross-country effort at the top.
At the end of the road I reached the upper
edge of the preserve boundary.
Signs here clearly indicate private
property on the north side. A road on that side leads
up to Pt. 980ft, about a quarter mile east of Peak 989ft. An
unsigned,
unmaintained trail follows up the right side of a fence
that marks the boundary. I followed this up to Pt. 980ft, just
inside the preserve boundary. A set of three
plastic chairs are
found under an oak at an overlook site with views south to Pismo
Beach. Just on the other side of the
barbed-wire fence is a small
telcom installation (and the reason for the road on private
property). This is the end of the easy stuff. the last 1/4mi to
the highpoint has no old, forgotten or secret trail, much as I
would have liked. I did find evidence that someone had
cut through some of
the manzanita on the north side of the telecom
tower, as though they were trying to make a trail, but it
didn't get me very far. To be fair, there was no impenetrable
brush that could have had me giving up. The real problem was that
the oak forest understory was completely
carpeted in poison oak.
There was absolutely no way to avoid the stuff. Any right-minded
individual would laugh and just turn around. I had been wondering
about this peak for more than 10yrs now. Why? It has no name, no
views and at less than 1,000ft, it would be difficult to classify
it as anything more than a coastal bump. I have a disease, it would seem.
I'm highly sensitive to poison oak but I gave little
thought to turning around, instead I turned to the most trusted
of thought processes - rationalization. Maybe I could just step
on the stuff. Any PO on the bottom of my shoes would wipe off when
I get back to the trail, right? Oh, this stuff is 2ft high! Well,
maybe we'll just have to wash our pants when we get back. Oh,
damn, was that branch I tried to duck under PO? It went like this
for a quarter mile until I finally reached
the highpoint. Oddly,
there was just oaks and grass and very little PO at the actual
summit. I was going to leave a register at the summit but
completely forgot while I was up there - probably distracted by
the stress so much bio-contamination causes. It was probably a
good thing - no reason to give the next peakbagger an incentive
to repeat stupid.
I reversed course after satisfying that I had crossed over the
highpoint, returned to the trail system
and enjoyed a nice hike down
the Upper Road, past a nice
picnic viewspot and back to
the TH by
5:30p. The park was even more popular now, the lot completely
full. Few of them heading up to Peak 989ft, I suspect...
Continued...
This page last updated: Thu Jul 2 14:18:10 2020
For corrections or comments, please send feedback to: snwbord@hotmail.com