Side Pop - El Cajon - A Live Journey to the Summit

El Cajon Mountain is one of the steepest, most deceptive, most psychologically demanding day hikes in Southern California — and in this live journey episode, we take you onto the rollers, and up the spine of a mountain that never stops taking and never stops teaching.

This is a real‑time walk through a February gut‑check: early‑season legs, early‑season lungs, and a route that climbs, drops, climbs again, and punishes anyone who underestimates it. You’ll hear the grades, the grit, the pacing decisions, the hydration calls, and the mental resets that make El Cajon a 66/100 on the Blisterpop Difficulty Scale — a “Very Hard” Pop that feels like a training run for Cactus to Clouds.

This is not a highlight reel.
 This is not a polished recap.
 This is the climb as it happened — steep, exposed, relentless, and honest.

If you’re training for a big day, building your early‑season engine, or just want to understand why El Cajon is the San Diego mountain that humbles everyone at least once, this episode is your companion on the trail.

Off you pop.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

This is Off You Pop, a podcast for hikers and adventurers who want to be epic in just one day. There's a moment before every big day, where you're standing in the dark, pack on your shoulders, wondering if you're ready. Today we're talking about a mountain that forces that moment on you early and often. This is the prelude to the day's training climb, a sidepop to El Cajon, the hardest non-technical day hike in San Diego, a physiological trap disguised as a moderate trail. This is the first big day of the year. A gut check. The day that tells us whether we're ready to take on the year's challenges. First I'm going to break it down here in the studio, and then I'll take you to the mountain and walk you through it step by step as it actually unfolds. It's a 365-foot-high desert monster and demands 3,500 feet of elevation gained from you. A strenuous, exposed, classic. This is Elkahon. And this is off you pop. Elkahon is a mountain that tells you the truth. It doesn't care how fit you you think you are. It doesn't care how many peaks you climbed last year. It doesn't care what your watch says or what your training plan says or what your ego says. Elkahorn cares about one thing. Can you manage yourself when the environment turns against you? Because this mountain is not about altitude. It's not about distance. It's not about technical terrain. It's about heat, exposure, and discipline. It's a systems test, the perfect early season climb, because it exposes every weakness you've been ignoring. Before we get into the facts, let's talk about how we measure difficulty on this show. If you're new here, the Blisterpop difficulty scale is a 100-point system that breaks a route into five parts. Physical load, scored from 0 to 40, environmental severity, score from 0 to 25, technical difficulty, score from 0 to 15, logistics and commitment, score from 0 to 10, and finally psychological demand, score from 0 to 100. Add them up, and you get your final score. But the score isn't the point. The point is what it tells you. Difficulty isn't one thing, it's a stack. An alcohol and stack looks like this. Physical, 27 out of 40. There are steep grades, cumulative gain, and a root profile that feels like it was designed by someone who hates knees. Environmental, 20 out of 25. This is the star of the show. Full sun, radiant heat, no shade, dry air, and one of the hottest microclimates in San Diego. Technical, eight out of fifteen. Loose rock, eroded steps, uneven footing. Nothing scary, but nothing easy. Logistics, five out of ten. Eight hours, no water, no bailout, the parking feels early, the start time matters more than you think. Psychological. Putting it all together, scores 66 out of 100 very hard on the listed part of the difficulty scale. Not because of altitude, not because of distance, but because of static difficulty. Alright, let's talk about what this mountain actually is. The distance of the hike is between 11 and 12 miles. The elevation gain is close to 3,500 feet. The highest point is 3,675 feet. It's an out and back trail, and it'll take anywhere between 5 and 8 hours. Its local nickname is El Capitan. Not that you're so many one, but it sure does look like it. Elkahan is part of the peninsula ranges. It's a massive block of granite formed 90 million years ago. This granite fractures into blocks, reflects the heat, creates steep, rugged terrain, and exfoliates into slabs and boulders. The north face, the one the climbers call El Cat, is one of the largest granite monoliths in Southern California. This is a chaparral ecosystem, one of the most fire-adapted landscapes on earth. You'll see chimese, manzanita, scrub oak, yucca, coastal sagebrush. And you'll probably see lizards, hawks, quail, maybe a coyote, and maybe a metal snake if it's warm enough. This is the Kumayay land. People have moved through these valleys and ridges for thousands of years. Later came ranchers, miners, and eventually hikers. Today, El Cahan is a rite of passage for anyone who wants to understand what hard feels like in San Diego. So let's talk about how I'm planning this climb and what I'll be paying attention to when we hit the trail for the on the pop segment. This is a sunrise or earlier mountain. Heat is the hazard. I'm starting early. This is also a three to four-litre day. There's no water on the route, and electrolytes are mandatory. For pacing, the first descent is a line. It feels like a break. It's actually a debt. I'm pacing for the return, not the summit. I'll be taking poles, sun protection, my trail runners with good grip, a buff, a hat, and light gloves for the rocky section. And what I'll be watching for is how the heat builds, how the rollers feel, how the footing changes, and how the difficulty shows up in real time, and how the return is compared to the approach. So that's the plan, that's the mountain, that's the difficulty. And now it's time to go see what Elkahorn actually feels like. So let's get on the pop. So before we hit the trail, let's talk about when to go, how to get here, and where to stay. And so one of the challenges with El Gahorn is the heat. So I decided to go in February. And I was very lucky in that the week before I went on the hike, it was raining very heavily in San Diego. And even the day before when I arrived, there was a very heavy downfall the day before. And so that really changes the aspect of this mountain. One of the challenges with El Cahorn is really the heat. So when you're in San Diego in the city, you're on the ocean, and so the ocean breezes regulate the temperature. But El Cajón is about 25 miles inland and it has its own microclimate and it's blisteringly hot. And so you have to be aware of that. The weather in San Diego may be just fine. But when you get out to that mountain, it could be blisteringly hot. So try to do this one in the winter. Now it's low enough that it won't receive much snow, if any, at all. And so it can be done in the winter pretty easily. About a month after my hike, unfortunately, there was a death on El Cahorn. There was an unusually unseasonable heat wave in late March. And a gentleman went out there, started at 8 o'clock, made it to the top, but unfortunately never came back. They found him a little bit off the trail, hiding in the bushes from the shade, and he unfortunately expired. So your airport and your base town for this is San Diego. And I was fortunate enough to be there for a work conference. And so I stayed in a Hilton on the harbour front. We don't have to do that. There's plenty of options of places to stay in San Diego. Actually, try and avoid the downtown. It's very expensive around the conference center. But I was very lucky there was beautiful views out of the hotel of the harbor front. And the night before I went to this fantastic seafood restaurant called the Tom Ham Lighthouse Restaurant. So if you're in that area, it's near the airport. Fantastic seafood, highly recommended. I decided not to rent a car, and instead I found an Uber driver who was willing to pick me up at the hotel, drive me out, drop me off at five in the morning, bless him, and meet me five and a half hours later to pick me up from the trailhead. And so I I sort of arranged my own private drive out to the trailhead. And you can drive, the only wrinkle in that is that the parking lot doesn't open until 8 a.m. And so you saw with the gentleman I just talked about, unfortunately passed away, he started at 8 a.m. And I highly recommend you start before dawn for this one just to try and beat the heat and be back off of the mountain quickly enough. The total hike should take five to seven hours, depending on how quickly you hike and what the conditions are like. And so if you leave at 5 a.m. you should be back before noon when it gets super, super, super hot. I mean it will still get very, very hot later on in the morning. I managed to do the hike in five hours, so I was back around 10 a.m. And you know, this is not a hike to be taken lightly. The city or the county closes this park off in the summer, particularly in August, just because it's so blisteringly hot, it's very, very dangerous. So I highly recommend that you don't do this in the summer, find something else to do. And so I'm gonna walk you through the adventure that I had and what the route is like, what the conditions are like and how to get this one knocked out, preferably in the winter. So I was there in early February, it was about, I would say, a half-hour drive from downtown San Diego to get to the trailhead. My driver dropped me off about 5 a.m. Got off of the parking lot and it was pitch black. Couldn't see a thing. You could see the parking lot and the gate was was closed. And so I began the hike and you begin going up a road that's very steep. Because it's dark, you can't really tell how steep it is, but it'll get your lungs going, it'll test your legs real early. It's not that long, it's maybe like 10-15 minutes to get to the top of this short little incline. You'll come to a little ranch, little fruit stand, and then you'll see the trailhead. And that's really where the trail begins. And you will go up into a little clearing, a flat piece of ground, and there's a poster board there that shows you everything about the trail. It gives you is gives you a little route map and shows you the elevation profile, gives you some information about some of the dangers you might find on the trail, particularly rattlesnakes and mountain lions. This is their territory. So you've got to be very, very aware of that when you attempt this mountain, particularly pre-dawn, particularly if it's warmer. Like I said, I went in February, so it was a really nice morning. It was really chilly. It was in the 40s, and my driver, Fran Francisco, was complaining about how cold it was. And Francisco is a great guy. I was chatting to him in the car, and it turns out he's was an ultra-marathoner, had done a whole bunch of trail running around San Diego, but now in this in the South Deserts, and his wife had made me a warm breakfast sandwich, and he gave me a banana and a couple of tangerines for the hike. So he he knew what it was about. He gave me exactly the right food for the hike. I got some some meat, some protein, gave me some banana for some potassium, and then some you pick-me-up oranges to sort of wake me up. So it was a really pleasant surprise that his wife, Veronica, had done that. And so I ate half the sandwich on the way up there just to get a little bit of fuel in me, and then I stuffed everything else back in my backpack. So the the hike begins in earnest, and it begins really with a bunch of switchbacks. And they're not that steep, but they do, you know, get you up in the hills. It was very, very dark, and you could tell you were in the desert. But because of the heavy downfall the day before, the air felt really damp, and it was really cool, and there was a light breeze. And so I just went, I think, on the perfect day where the heat was not an issue. Um otherwise this hike is very, very hard. You hear you heard me say it's a 66 hard on the on the scale, and I'll talk a little bit later about why you know it matters when you go and how that impacts your hike. But for this one and this day, just a just the perfect day to go hiking. And so you start going up the switchbacks, the the the undergrowth sort of closes in on you, and because of the rain, there was a it was very damp underfoot, and I was recording and talking aloud while I was going up the switchbacks. And that was partly because I was trying to record what I was doing for the social media, and me talking and being loud was an also an attempt to make sure if there were there were any mountain lions out there, I was scaring them off. I had my headlamp on, and so that was sort of flashing around, and my annoying voice was sort of booming around around the bottom of the mountain. Within the first mile, you come out of the switchbacks and you come onto this much wider track, and you have to take a second to think about where you're going. Obviously, you can go right or you can go left, but the mountain was left, and it was fairly obvious it was left. But I did a little bit of a check on my phone. I used the Gaia app, I downloaded the GPX trail so I could see exactly where I needed to go. And so you head left and you start going into a section called the rollers. And right there at the intersection, a little way in, uh, you'll see a sign, and on that sign, it describes the four types of rattlesnakes that you can find on this mountain. So not just one, there are four different types that you can find when you're going on this trail. I was pretty confident there weren't going to be any rattlesnakes. That didn't really concern me just because of the cornice and you know it was February and the winter. They're likely to be relatively dormant and it was cold and wet, and so I was highly, I was thinking highly, it was highly unlikely they'll be basking in the sun or basking in a piece of you know undergrowth that they could potentially get me. So they're so the rattlesnakes really weren't an issue. It was still dark, so I started down this wide track, and this next section is known locally as the rollers. And what you're gonna find is you're gonna be going up and down and up and down, and it goes on for about a mile or so. And you know, in the beginning, it's not too bad because you start going down a little bit, but then you hit the first uphill. It's not too bad, but it does tax the legs a bit, and then you go back down again, and then you come back up again. So it goes on for a little while, and I made an interesting observation on the way back. There's quite a number of these little informational signs that tell you about the flora fauna on the mountain. It seemed like every time there was one of these signs, it was sort of in the dip. So it was sort of an indicator of when the trail was about to go up again or down again, depending which direction you were going. And so just look out for that if you're gonna do this trail, because you that that's that's your sign that uh you're about to go uphill in all likelihood. And there was an interesting sign along the way about mountain lions comparing different footprints to a bobcat or a cougar, and a really stark reminder that you are in the wilderness. You're only 20 odd miles from a big city, but you are out there and you feel like you're out there and you feel isolated. And certainly that time of the morning there was nobody there because the parking lot doesn't open to eight, so all the locals know that they can start the hike at 8 o'clock. Well, I'm not a local and I didn't follow those those rules, and so I was the only one on the trail. And by about two miles in, I'd gotten through the rollers, still very dark, but we're starting to get into the blue zone. The sun was just starting to peek out, the stars were starting to go down, and you could just see the dark silhouette of the mountain ridge rolling on into the background. And as you come out of the rollers, you hit the real first big hike, and as you start to climb up, there is a stop sign. It's very bizarre to be walking along, and there's a stop sign, but the stop sign is a warning. If you're not ready, if you're not prepared, if you don't have water, if it's too hot, turn back. And I absolutely recommend that if you've got a couple of miles in, you're probably our hour and a half, probably about an hour in the hike in all reality. And so you're gonna start to feel the heat, you're gonna start to feel the pain, you've been up and down the rollers. And if you're really not feeling it, doesn't feel like the right day, turn back. This is a serious mountain that kills people, and don't don't get all caught up in the bravado of having to do the mountain. You don't have to do it, you can come back another time and do it. It'll still be there. And so at this time I could start to see the light was coming up, the sunrise was up. It was kind of a cloudy day. I was looking out to the east to see if I got a spectacular sunrise, but it it wasn't to be. But the birds started singing, and that was just beautiful. We're starting to climb up along this ridgeline, and you hear the birds singing, you're alone in the wilderness, and just really feeling it. And the bizarre thing about the hike on this particular day is it had rained so heavily the day before, there was water running down the trail, it was running across the trail, it was damp underfoot, and I was anticipating no water, dry and arid, and so I'd taken a bunch of water, but I really didn't need to because the air was very moist, and actually I just had to make sure my feet didn't get too wet so I didn't end up with blisters. So you can tell when the start when the hiking starts in earnest because you sort of get off of that wide track and you're getting much more into single trail. The trail becomes a lot more rocky, and you are definitely ascending along the edge of the ridgeline. To your left as you're walking along, you're gonna see a huge ridge. That is, I believe, Silver Dome 2, and it is it is there is a trail that goes up there, so if you choose and you've got time in the day, that might be a side trail that you want to do. I didn't really fancy doing it this day. I didn't have time because I had arranged the the uh lift so I couldn't just you know go exploring. I had to be back at the parking lot in five and a half hours. I didn't know how long it was going to take. I saw five to seven hours. These things you always got to take with a grain of salt, and it'll really depends. Do you get lost? You know, do you what's your pacing like on the day? Uh so I was being very mindful of the time. But you come up along the ridge to the left and you start really climbing and keep following it, and you once you get to the top, you'll go along a little bit and then it'll start going back downhill again. It's kind of disheartening. You've sort of got some got some altitude, but then back downhill. And I remember sort of musing about you know hiking and really how dangerous it is. I was thinking about the danger on this mountain. Because so far at this point it hadn't been super strenuous, the climb wasn't super difficult, and the trail was really, really well marked, it was really easy to follow. And so I was wondering why this was the you know the hardest hike in San Diego Count County at this point, but with that heat, that becomes a problem. That makes it a whole different hike, a higher, a high level of difficulty on a you know, a totally different scale that is really, really dangerous. So do be careful when you go out here. But I was musing, you know, I've done all of these adventures over time, lots of different trail races, obstacle graces, go ruck, adventure races, and they never have made me feel quite as alive as when I'm in the mountains. And the reason is when you go and do one of these events, there's sort of this safety net around you. The course is marked, you sort of know where you're going. There's lots of other people competing in the event at the same time. The race directors have usually set up some sort of first aid. People know that you're there, they know that you're on the track, or they know you know roughly where you're going. You know, worst case scenario, EMS is coming to get you. But when you're on the mountain, when you're alone, you know, every step could turn a good day into a terrible day. You could twist an ankle, run into a mountain lion get lost suffer from heat exhaustion uh any of those things one wrong step one unexpected turn and suddenly you're in a world of trouble so you really got to take it seriously when you're out in the mountains especially if you're hiking alone just make sure that you are 100% in the moment you're being mindful every step counts and that's the difference and that's what makes it real you are alive 100% because the dangers are real you're fully aware of the danger and it sort of adds this extra element of feeling alive and feeling like you're on the trail and feeling like you're having a really epic adventure so as I'm coming back down you sort of move from the mountain ridge being on the left and you then you move to the mountain ridge being on the right and you start slowly ascending up along the ridge as you're sort of side hilling but the trail is obvious there's only one trail you're not getting lost and the undergrowth is pretty thick so it would be pretty hard to go bushwhacking and I really wouldn't recommend bushwacking it's really it's really thick out there. It's not very tall it is sort of desert type brush and so it doesn't offer you any shelter from the shade and I think that's where this this this poor gentleman had attempted to get in the shade but it's really it's really really exposed. It's not going to do a lot for you and as I'm traveling along there are these streams that are coming across the trail you're sort of wet foot in it a little bit there's little creeks or water runoffs running directly down the trail so you're sort of splish splashing along and eventually you can see El Cahorn in the distance and it's quite the mountain there's certainly a climb to go but you're already fairly high up at this point so it's not a major major climb at least it doesn't feel like a major climb because the grade of the trail and because it's so manicured and so well tended is never really really strenuo strenuous and as you're coming up the mountain you come across the wreck of an old car and you'll see it on on the internet this old car there and I stopped took a few photos and was sort of musing on how did this car actually get here? There's not really a road up here. There's a road sort of towards the beginning I know maybe you know a hundred years ago or 50 years ago whenever this car got here there was a road. I find it highly doubtful but it kind of looked like it was maybe an old military vehicle but it really is a rusted hole so it's hard to tell and so I was imagining you know World War I World War II sometimes they airdrop stuff up in the mountains to do sort of training exercises so maybe it was a bit a bit of a leftover remnant from some sort of military exercise but it's an interesting sight on the trail and certainly worth stopping and taking a few photos just to add that element of interest. So it starts to get a little bit steeper as you're climbing up and this is after this bit you really get up onto the ridge. So the first time you're up onto the ridgeline and you reach this intersection and at the intersection you can go left if you go left you go to El Cahon if you go right you go to El Capitan and I'd read that the trip to El Capitan was pretty short and pretty easy and so I figured if the timing was right I had enough time I'd probably do the little side hike but El Cahon was definitely the goal for the day so I headed left and this was really the hardest part of the hike the final climb it was pretty steep lots of boulders that you have to navigate it's a little bit navigationally challenging not much. I mean it's obvious where you're going you're going straight up to the ridge but there were you know it's a kind of navigate around large boulders there were slightly higher step ups when you're going up because it's a little bit steeper. But you know you make short work of it you're probably up the top in 15 20 minutes and then you're there. You've made it it's about four or five miles in and I sit on the web everybody grabs this sign El Cahorn takes a photo in front of the sign and so I made it up to the top I found the USG plaque I couldn't find the sign I was looking around for it where's the sign and it was nowhere to be found and I think maybe they took it down for the winter but the views from the top are fantastic you are seeing really the peninsula range stretching out before you you've got those 360 views you are a long way from anywhere the wind was certainly starting to pick up I've been sort of building up a bit of a sweat getting up the mountain and uh standing still for a bit you start to feel the chill always a bad idea to sweat sweat on the mountains but you know I took my videos I admired the views you could see in the distance the clouds are rolling off in the distant mountains sort of just kissing the peaks but otherwise it was a really beautiful blue sky day you know I found a little place just off the summit getting out of the wind taking a little break finished the other half of this fantastic sandwich there was definitely something spicy in the sandwich and I was going to drill Francisco when I got back to the car to find out what the hidden ingredient was in that sandwich but it was definitely I was definitely very grateful that I had that little bit of protein to pick me up I ate the banana you know I had one of the oranges and that really brought me back to life after the hike and then it was time to descend and once you reach the peak there's always that moment of elation I've done it I'm there I've conquered El Kahan and now it's time to go back and it feels just like this weight is lifted off your shoulder you can just enjoy the trail and in my mind the summit is never really the goal the summit is the nice view. That's sort of your reward for the work but the joy of the hike is in the getting there. It's in the trail itself it's in the things you see along the way it's on the effort that it takes to get there and I was only at the top for maybe half an hour. A lot of that was trying to look for the look for the sign I wasn't even sure I was in the right place at one point and then sitting down and having a you know a little snack. So coming back down off of alcohol and you had to navigate those quite treacherous boulders. I found myself sort of boulder hopping down getting a little bit of pace on and you really need to be very confident about your footing and your ability to navigate the trail it's very important that you've done the training to make sure your legs can handle it. You see a lot of folks talk about hike training online and they're doing squats and they're doing lunges but you really need to do plyo. You need to be doing jump training because when you come off the mountain you really want to be sort of moving with the gradient and let your body kind of go and be confident about hopping from rock to rock and navigating through you know roots and rocks and the trail and that requires a certain amount of confidence otherwise you're going to be really slow and you're going to be really timid and the mountain does not reward the timid. If you're timid you are more likely to stumble and fall if you've got confidence and you've your legs are strong and you've trained them to be able to take the sort of punishment coming down the hill then you're gonna be a lot better off you're gonna be navigating through the mountain much more smoothly much lighter you want to be light on your feet get your poles out when you're gonna go downhill because you want to save your legs. Remember the rollers we still have to navigate the rollers and this is a mountain that's supposed to be uphill both ways and it's those rollers that that make it so and so you do want to save your legs and the poles are the way that you really take a lot of the pressure off your knees so you can save it for later on in the day. And that's really you know big day hiking you really want to be you really want to conserve the amount of punishment your ankles and your knees and your calves are getting because otherwise toward the end of the day you're really going to start feeling it you'll really start regretting it. It's gonna make the hike really miserable so it's all about energy conservation moving efficiently and being light on your feet. Remember that always be light on your feet when you're traveling through the mountains. And so I was quickly back down to the junction and was making great time I think we were about three hours in and so that left me plenty of time to get back to the parking lot for my ride and I'd heard the El Capitan view was pretty good too and it was only about half a mile so I decided to to do the El Capitan sort of side spur. Not steep at all slightly going uphill but nothing nothing to write home about didn't take very long to get up there. When you get there there is a sign El Capitan gives you the elevation and you get beautiful views looking out to the ocean. The ocean's kind of far away you can sort of see you can sort of see San Diego but it's just a really great expansive view. And right below where you're standing you don't see it from where you're you're sitting but right below you is this huge granite megalith and it's a local rock climbing legend it really is why that peak is called El Capitan they sort of tongue in cheek named it after the Yosemite El Capitan because it has that sort of climbing mythology but I didn't go down there and check it out. I did definitely have to get back to the trail but definitely worth the side hike not very strenuous at all and you know another good way to get good views of the mountain and you've bagged two peaks in one day so how great is that so headed started heading back down and now then it was the easy return journey and there's this beautiful bit when you're coming back down from the junction you start going back down the trail I couldn't resist it was nice and smooth it wasn't too rocky had a nice gentle grade and I thought this is a perfect time to do a little bit of trail running didn't want to push it too hard still recovering from an injury at the time but I just couldn't resist it was just such a beautiful slope so I did a little bit of trail running maybe not too far maybe like 500 meters or so back down the trailhead. It was just beautiful there's a little bit of wet footing a little bit of the water was running down the creek got to the bottom of the little little slope and then got back to regular hiking pace. I used the poles on the way down I didn't want to really bang my knees up too much and then it was just really a joyous return until you get to the rollers and so now you're up and down again and that first hit of the first incline you're like oh my god I'd forgot about these and now I've got to go back uphill and it's always so miserable when you think you're going back down the mountain that you have to go back up again and at that point I've I bumped into the first hiker of the day coming up the mountain so he probably left around eight o'clock and just said hi and he went on his way but that very first little jolt reminds you that you've got all those up and downs to do. So the first up was pretty painful at least psychologically painful it wasn't actually that hard and sort of started going up and then moving along back down the ridge back through the mountains back down the very there was one piece that's a little bit steeper just before you get to the real part of the rollers and as I came back down that side there was a group of women hiking so certainly it was starting to open up people were starting to get on the trail starting to warm up a little bit too I was starting to feel a little bit warmer starting to feel that super hot microclimate and then we got into the rollers proper and that's when I noticed oh sign here's your sign we're going up and I deployed this technique that I'd learned many many many years ago of going up hills even going up little hills you want to really save your energy and what you want to do is sort of zigzag your way up the slope and what it does is it kind of acts like mini switchbacks and so you're not like hoofing it up a very steep grade you're making it easier on yourself by traversing across the trail and this at this part the trail was very very wide more like a road at this point and so you had the room to zigzag up and that just makes it a whole lot better you know in terms of longevity on the trail and conserving energy rather than sort of power hiking straight up the slope just do the longer distance it's probably at least in the long run if not the short run it's probably just as quick as hoofing up the hill because you're going up a gentle gentler grade and so when you go a gentler grade you're not burning as much energy you can move a little bit quicker. And so that's how I proceeded through the rollers sort of zigzag up and then sort of just go straight down making sure I'm conserving my energy and I ended up getting through the rollers pretty quick and back to that junction on the road where the switchbacks are to the parking lot. There wasn't a signpost there so I sort of hesitated a bit I come up in the dark and I couldn't remember is this the turning or is it a little bit further and then I saw the signpost was on the ground there was like a wooden sign on the ground and I picked it up and sure enough there was an arrow pointing down to the parking lot. So I sort of placed it up there so other people would see it. I'm sure you know this is a weekday so I'm sure all the locals knew where they were going but you sort of pop off the road just don't don't be tempted to keep following the road pop off the road into the zigzags again into the switchbacks again and go down the switchbacks for a little bit a mile you know maybe half a mile come back off the trail onto the road and you can see that steep grade of road that you came up when you first started and you are quickly back at the parking lot and when I got to the parking lot there were maybe half a dozen cars there a couple of people getting ready to hike which was surprising it was 10 o'clock I made it to the parking lot in five hours no Francisco I oh my god is he gonna come and pick me up I'm not sure I thought he might be waiting but I was early I told him five and a half hours and so I wasn't too worried and I I I text him I had signal so I text him and just hung around for 20 minutes waiting for him to show up and just reflecting on the hike and what I was really reflecting on was the difficulty scale that the blister pop algorithm had come up with for this hike putting it as 66 out of 100 that doesn't sound like it's a lot but the way we've engineered the scale really anything over 48 is getting into the the low hard zone and so 66 puts it at the pretty hard zone and when I looked back at the scale it was all about the environment about the heat that's that made it a a huge score and really pushed up to 66 but on a cool day when the heat isn't a factor like today it really probably isn't a 66 worthy. It may be like a 50 worthy because the it's all about the heat and I never found the trail to be overly strenuous. Maybe the last little climb up to El Cahan but it really wasn't that long. It was relatively steep not super steep and it was so easy to navigate and follow it was really hard to get lost so that didn't make it particularly challenging and because I had a cool day even the rollers on the way back were not too bad because my heat was being regulated and the total length of the trail was around 10 and a half 11 miles and so it the distance wasn't that huge. It wasn't one of those big day hikes where you were doing you know 20 30 miles. It certainly wouldn't make the US 21 list but because it was in San Diego County it was the hardest hike in San Diego County and when I was looking for a hike down here it was the one that stood out and so that's why I I hiked it and it was also a great uh training hike for my upcoming UK six peaks adventure. So all of those peaks in the UK they top out sort of high 3000 low 4000 feet but most of them start around sea level and a lot of them are sort of around the coast so they start literally at sea level particularly Snayfell that is at sea level and I think Sleeve Denard in Northern at sea level up three and a half four thousand feet. So the elevation gain and the distance were very similar to what I was doing in the UK and I was planning for four hour trips when I did this effort just to make sure I was keeping the timing going. And although it took me five hours on this day I had spent like half an hour at the top eating some lunch getting acclimatized and then I was taking a lot of video during the day to provide some content for social media and so a lot of stopping and starting taking photos taking videos doing little vignettes and so I think it probably was a four hour four hour 15 hike if I'd been you know on it and concentrating and that's really what I wanted to see if I could hit that four hour mark and it's definitely doable the climate in Southern Ireland particular for Carantor Hill which is the one I'm most concerned about it's going to be moist and damp kind of like the day on El Cahan so maybe a little bit more slippery maybe some fog to deal with but I was pretty pleased with that. So then Francisco shows up picks me up drive back to the hotel and we had a good old chat about his adventures trail running around San Diego he made a few recommendations of a couple of hikes if I ever find myself back in town and it was really a great day and a great experience it was a great hike probably a doable hike for many many people but just don't do it in the summer it really really is dangerous. That's why it gets that hard rating it's the it's got this weird microclimate where it's in sort of this hot zone and it's very dry and it gets very very hot and very very dangerous. Even even in March this poor guy got caught out by the heat and that was a real shame and you know learning about that was a real eye opener I guess I just got a lucky break and we all have to be very careful and be very safe on the mountain and be very mindful of when you go and that's really why we built these guides is to make sure you're you're going at the right time because if you go at the wrong time it becomes miserable. It becomes a suffer fest it becomes dangerous so if you really want to have a good experience on these hikes make sure you're doing your research and you're you're getting out there at the right time but highly recommended it was really a beautiful trail and the views at the top were spectacular just not super super challenging if you want something much more challenging you have to go a little bit further out from San Diego. There's a couple of real big mountains and when you get out that way probably another hour or so out into the mountains but I would recommend it. Definitely a great day so that's El Cahorn. Now off your pop