Nefertitian's Blog: Palomar Mountain Hike (May 9, 2009)

I had been asking for a nice, slow paced, relaxful and shady forest hike that had some decently dense vegetation. My hiking friend Stephen picked the palomar mountain for this weekend's hike which fit my description perfectly. Most of the palomar trails are wooded flat terrains at around 5000 feet above sea level. These forest trails are an ideal hike for a summer day where there is plenty of shade and beautiful breezes.

Overall, at the Palomar mountian, we hiked up the entire loop of the palomar map, covering several trails in a single day. We started off from the park headquarters towards the chimney flats trail, and then towards the thunder springs trail until we came across the Doane pond (which apparently is popular for trout fishing). We relaxed for a bit there and then hit the doane valley nature trail, then up across till the end of the french valley trail. We then backtracked back via the baptist trail, passed through cedar grove campground and across the adams trail , boucher trail and finally reached our starting point via the silver crest trail. About 10-11 miles of nice and peaceful forest hike on mostly flat terrain littered with huge old oak trees, and plenty of burnt and fallen tree stumps (the baptist trail was a tad bit steeper).

I had plenty of good photo opportunities along the different trails but unfortunately most of the wildlife pictures I was able to capture came out pretty bad to the point that it was not worth uploading. I even ran into a group of photographers on a field trip led by a lady teacher from Palomar College. I ended up getting a free lesson from her on how to use those heavy speedlite canon flashes.

Some Wild Flowers:

I dont' remember but I think they are one of them oak tree seeds? Too bad the squirrel in that movie Ice Age didn't know about this area. I heard they are edible when cooked in a certain manner.

Skunk Cabbage, apparently named because of their smell. They smelled fine to me:

I forgot the name of this plant but the fine threads on the stem give you a nasty itch:

The grey goose squirrel, maybe:

Apparently, this is where the water comes out of the mountain, Stephen says:

One of them very old type of can openers. Stephen mentioned that thing must have been lying there for decades:

Palomar is so named after these type of pigeons, the brochure said so:

Another new trick I learnt from Stephen. If you are hungry, its safe to eat these things. Tasted like almonds to me, and walnuts to stephen who apparently ate several.