Distance: 9.9 miles round trip on trail and use trail
Summit Elevation: 5755' (Iron Spring), 5548' (Beauty)
Prominence: 1075' (Iron Spring), 388' (Beauty)
Elevation Gain: 2843'
Elevation Gain (in Empire State Buildings): 2.2
Round trip time: 6 hours 40 minutes
Recommended water: 120 oz.
Parking/Fees: Free on Tule Peak Road
Difficulty: Moderate
Iron Spring and Beauty are in north San Diego County. Like Rabbit, these were on my want-to-do list for a while and finally made it to the gonna-do-today list. Both are HPS summits not far above the 5000' minimum. I drove in on Tule Peak Road and found it very rough and rutted. Only after the hike did I check the Sierra Club driving directions that avoid the poor section of road. A sedan can make it to the starting point.
I started up the overgrown trail looking for the major gully. The grass was knee high in places and the path was not clear. Once I found the gully, a better use trail appeared that went up the left side. After that, it followed the drainage up to a large clearing and intersection with Iron Spring Trail. On the way to the clearing, I brushed off 10 ticks. I was on pace for a record setting tick day. Iron Spring Trail was wide and clear. I continued south toward Beauty and casually walked right past the use trail junction. I reversed course and marked a waypoint at the junction to help find my way out later. The use trail was clipped most of the way and there were frequent cairns, but it was still fairly difficult to follow. Navigation was non-trivial and it slowed me down. It was narrow and overgrown in many places. After going over a couple of bumps, I got to the base of Beauty. The final ascent was quite steep and ended with a class 2 scramble. There was a benchmark and reference mark on top and a few HPS registers. I signed in and took my first break, clearing foxtails from my shoes and socks. Views were nicer than expected. Then I headed back toward Iron Spring Mountain.
Start
The gully
Approaching Beauty
Class 2 finish
Looking through the glare at Iron Spring
At the clearing, I took the Iron Spring Trail the other direction a short distance before reaching the Iron Spring use trail on the left. This use trail was easier to follow than the one to Beauty, but still had narrow overgrown places. By this time, I had attracted a swarm of bothersome bugs coming back from Beauty. I broke down and put on the bug net. The bug net was the best $3 I've ever spent. I kept it on all the way to the Iron Spring summit. The steepest part of this trail was the climb up and over Peak 5725. Then, it was just another quarter mile of relatively flat terrain to Iron Spring with its thousand feet of prominence. The use trail got poor at the very end with tall grass refilling my shoes and socks with foxtails. I didn't find any benchmarks on the Iron Spring summit, but I flipped through the register and noted the 25th and final signature from Mars Bonfire. I took my second break and rested up for the return. I only picked up three more ticks on the way down for a total of 13, not coming close to my 21-tick record. I wasn't sure I had brushed all of them off until I got home in the shower. No bites today. The GPS was useful on this trip for the trickiest spots.
Approaching Iron Spring
Looking across to Beauty Peak
Back down the gully
Would you like to know more...?
No comments:
Post a Comment