Dec 29, 2008
|
With: | Marisa DiGiuseppe |
Ryan Burd |
The trail to the summit was a bit over two miles with about 1,000ft of gain,
taking about 45 minutes one-way. There are three points along the east-west
summit ridge vying for the highpoint, and intially I wandered up to
the
middle one.
The highest point is on the east end of the ridge, the rockiest of the
three, and most appropriate given the name. At the summit I found a
boundary marker between Los Angeles and Ventura Counties,
along with an unusual
rock painting that might have passed for an
Indian pictograph if the paint hadn't
been so fresh. The views stretched
east to the San Gabriels across
the San Fernando Valley,
south to the Santa Monica Mtns and the
Pacific Ocean, and west into Simi Valley and Ventura County.
After returning home, I packed up the van and drove Ryan and his cousin Marisa
out to Thousand Oaks for a climb of Simi Peak, the highpoint of the Santa
Susana Mountains. The 7.5' topo does a poor job of depiciting an area that has
been heavily developed since the map was last updated. Dirt roads indicated on
the map are now paved suburban roads with home pressed up to the base of the
hills on all sides. We drove out to the north end of Lindero Canyon Rd off
US101, finding the China Flat Trail TH
neatly squeezed between two homes.
The trail start off as a single track that shortly meets up with on old
dirt road that switchbacks up the south side of the mountain before
traversing over to the east side of the peak higher up where it reaches
China Flat, a pleasant oak-studded area with several
trail junctions. Though the route to the summit
is not signed, we found our way by taking the left-branching forks at several
turns, with the last section of single-track traversing up the
north side of the mountain before reaching
the summit.
In all, the three miles and 1,300ft of
gain took the three of us an hour and a quarter. As earlier in the day the
views were exceptional, even better than on Rocky Peak. We could see at least
five other county highpoints including Big Pine (Santa Barbara),
Baldy (Los
Angeles), San Gorgonio (San Bernardino), San Jacinto (Riverside), and
Santiago (Orange). Oddly, the county highpoint for Ventura (the county we were
in), was not visible, hidden to the north by the intervening Topatopa Mtns. To
the south we could see the Pacific Ocean and most of the Channel Islands.
A couple of mountain bikers
joined us shortly after we had reached the summit
ourselves, and after a brief tour pointing out the names of the surrounding
peaks, we left them with the summit to themselves. It took us about an hour for
the descent
via the same route we had ascended. A very nice day overall.
For more information see these SummitPost pages: Rocky Peak
This page last updated: Thu Jul 30 09:10:10 2009
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