View On Black
Although it's only a 900 foot elevation gain from the trailhead at 4,870 feet to the top at 5,730 feet, the trail is two miles long, one way, and takes two hours to climb. From the top, it is possible to see all the way to the Salton Sea, to the east (the direction this shot is facing) as well as Anza-Borrego State Park, the mountains of Baja California to the south, Cuyamaca Peak (6,512 feet elevation, second highest peak in San Diego County) to the west and Lake Cuyamaca to the north. My wife and I climbed Cuyamaca Peak with our dogs a few years ago, after having responded to two search callouts in two different counties, on the same day, with both being canceled before we got in the field, but that's another story.
This image was made in the empty parking space, right next to our van, at the picnic grounds in the Paso Picacho campground in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, where our
K-9 SAR group was giving a demo for the evening campfire program. It doesn't get any easier than this.
Later, we moved on up the road a bit to the old Boy Scout camp at Hual-Cu-Cuish (burned out during and not used since the 2003 Cedar fire), for a night training, which was a lot of fun. I got to go out with
Rioghan and Lauren, who is now a member, and
Duffy and Janet to give them their night sign-offs. Both teams did a great job and found their subjects in short order, despite the darkness and never having been there before.
