the BLM
as the Red Hils Recreation Management Area which has been further designated as
the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC).
Most of the terrain is rolling hills covered in grass and brush with a
smattering of pines. Cross-country travel varies from easy to difficult,
making route-finding a key part of how well one might enjoy things here. Jim
Retmeyer and Marcus Sierra seem to have covered all the hills over the past
years, providing some helpful GPX tracks on PB that I took advantage of.
Today's effort was a 6mi loop with 1,700ft of gain, covering 3 summits in the
northern part of the ACEC. The parking lot off SR120 I used can be reached by
any vehicle, though the last quarter mile was a little rough. One could make a
shorter outing of this by using the road network to drive closer to the various
summits, but it was less than 3.5hrs without doing so. I headed first to
Taylor Hill,
the easternmost of the three, following 
a dirt road down to paved
Red Hill Rd, about half a mile.
I then had to cross a creek before starting up to
Taylor Hill, which became an exercise in absurdity. I chose the worst possible
place to 
make a crossing,
not realizing this as I started through knee-high
blackberry brambles. This only got worse as I pushed on, growing to
chest-level
and tangled badly with woody shrubs on the creek. Thorns were grabbing my
pants, shirt, hat, gloves, and some skin, too. I spent more than 20min to
go about 100ft to get through this mess, finally reaching drier, easier ground
on 
the other side.
Only a few hundred feet to the north 
the crossing becomes
trivial (it seems there's a spring feeding the heavy brush growth where I was
crossing). The rest of the outing was a piece of cake by comparison. Another
25min saw me to 
the top of Taylor Hill.
The summit and much of my route to reach it is
actually outside BLM lands, but there was no fencing or signs to indicate this.
The top had a simple duck with views overlooking
Chinese Camp along
SR120, with various mines, mills and ranches peppered about the landscape.
I descended back down to the pavement by much the same route (avoiding the
brambles, this time), then started up to Peak 1,518ft on the west side of the
road. This was mostly open grass, weaving around buckthorn and other brush
until I found a very good 
trail
as I neared the summit. I'm not sure where it
starts on the east side, but it would be useful to get me down the west side
of the summit. I paused only briefly 
atop Peak 1,518ft,
finding little to hold
my interest and more curious as to where the trail I'd found goes. I went off
the WNW side, eventually merging into an old road which in turn merged with the
S. Serpentine Loop Rd, a driveable route in the ACEC. I followed this dirt road
as it heads NW for about 1/3mi, eventually turning west to head towards the
last summit, the Red Hills HP. It sports more than 500ft of prominence and had
the best views of the three peaks I visited. There was an ammo box holding a
geocache logbook
and the usual assortment of trinkets, none of which looked
particularly interesting. Chris Kerth had been the last to make an entry back
in February, climbing the same three summits plus another one I planned for
tomorrow. My return went quickly as I was only a mile and a quarter from
the parking spot, getting me back in about 30min to
finish up soon after 3p. I
probably had enough time for another peak elsewhere before sunset, but I was
feeling a little lazy and called it a day.
Continued...