No Bike Today

I was thinking about taking the bike over to Mission Trails and doing a loop of Fortuna Mt., but I am very glad I did not. I saw several cyclists there, and most them were pushing their bikes up extremely steep hills. Hills that I had trouble walking down!

I arrived at MTRP at six-thirty, and of course the gates were not open. So I had to park a quarter mile away on the road. More walking, yay!

Once I figured out how to cross the San Diego River without getting my feet wet, I headed over towards South Fortuna peak. I talked to a hiker about geocaching along the way, and along the way found a few geocaches.

The first one I didn't find was rated 4 out of 5 for difficulty and terrain. It was right on the edge of a rocky cliff. Some people mentioned a rope might be handy. From the pictures finders posted, I see that I was about ten feet above it. I DID find some sort of rock climber's log book in a crevice, though. I signed that!

At another cache i was lucky unnough to find a used sanitary napkin someone had stashed there. Nice!



The cache is under that small rock. Thanks, hikers! I did not have a trash bag with me, so I stashed the trash somewhere else under a rock, and washed my hands with liberal amounts of hand cleaner. I'll try to retrieve some other day.

Eventually I got to the top of the infamous Fortuna Steps. Very nice view!



It was foggy in the morning, as you can see. That is the Fr. J. Serra road up in the upper left.

Finally, the peak! I did not find the cache there, but I took some pics anyway.



I am staring at the GPSr, wondering where that darn cache went to.

A couple of view from the peak. To the east, sort of, San Carlos area.



And to the west, sort of, viewing North Fortuna peak. I'm not going up THAT today!



I made my way over to the Fortuna saddle and found the cache there. Made a side-trip down the power line road to another one, but did not find it. I talked to a couple of people about geocaching and hiking along the way. I probably saw nearly a hundred folks out there today, hiking and biking. Not all of them were carrying water, I don't think that was wise. I used two water bottles. It got a little warm after the sun broke through around ten.

It was pretty much all down hill from here. I think going downhill is nicer than going up hill, mostly. Mostly level is even better. I found several more caches, but not one that is on a power pole. I looked all OVER that pole, but I can't find it!

Later on I was walking along an upgrade A bicyclist passed me in granny gear. Then a running lady (with a backpack) passed him (and me) like he (and I) was (were) standing still. Would have made a more interesting pic, but I didn't get the camera whipped out until she had dropped to walking and he caught and passed her.



Well, that was about it. All that was left was to go DOWN the steep road to the river and then UP the steep road to the trailhead, and then along Mission Gorge Road to the Fr. J. Serra road where I had parked the vehicle. I was very glad to finally get back there, and I fired up the air conditioning on FULL!

You can look at my route on gMaps Pedometer.

It SAYS I went 6.32 miles and burned 865.9 calories. It does not say the elevation gain, but it looks like around 1,400 feet. At LEAST!

Oh, and I found thirteen geocaches and DNF four.

Oh, and here is a picture of the cat and my holey sneakers!



I gotta get new sneakers!

And I gotta go wash my feet!