Middle Peak, Cuyamaca Peak, Stonewall Peak

17 May 2003

By: Laura Joseph

A Spring Fling Outing led by Laura Joseph, Dave Comerzan, and Ginny Heringer

Saturday's hike featured the Middle, Cuyamaca, Stonewall almost loop. As I led, Dave Comerzan swept and Ginny Heringer naturalized this San Diego classic hike that attracted 17 hikers, many of whom were new to HPS. We decided that, in the interests of getting to the pot luck early, we would cut the loop and do a shuttle instead. We started with Middle -- a simple enough hike provided one can find the summit. With Dave backing me up on GPS, I orchestrated the ascent and, after a brief respite on the summit, led the group through the woods to the trail junction 190 degrees southwest of the summit.

From there, we took the Conejo trail to Cuyamaca Peak. This is my favorite section of the Cuyamaca hike (easy to say since the rest is paved) with beautiful views, and some zig-zagging and frequent change of scenery. We met Rosemary Campbell -- who was pathfinding -- on the way, as well as several 50 mile run participants and their yummy looking feeding stations.

By the time we headed down from Cuyamaca, it had become clear that we were a diverse group in many ways -- including pace. Hence, for Stonewall, we broke into fast and moderate groups, with the fast group quickly ascending and descending to Paso Pichaco and the shuttle back to the Middle Peak parking point.