Mt. Woodson Burned and Ellie Lane Hike

I work up early today so I could go for a hike and return in time for the early afternoon football game. My plan was to hike Mt. Woodson, however, I knew I was in trouble when I saw that the booth at the entrance to Lake Poway was gone, and assumably burned in the fire last October. I parked my car and walked to the beginning of the trail and there was a sign saying "Trail closed Ahead". So after wandering around confused for a few minutes, I asked the woman working the snack shop about the trail, and she said all the trails were closed. I had no idea that all of Mt. Woodson had burned. There was no brush visible at all from the lake. What a shame. That was a nice hike and it might be some time before they re-open the trails. So I got back in my car and drove up to good old Iron Mt.


There were a ton of cars parked along 67, but I found a spot right next to the gate. As I started hiking up, I could see the trail was very crowded. So I decided to take the alternate path up, the Ellie Lane Trail. I had never taken this path before, so I wasn't sure how to get there. There were several trails leading off the path that connects Iron Mt. trail to the Ellie Lane trail. I passed a woman walking two dogs and she asked me the same question I was going to ask her, "Which is the path to take?".

At the next fork, I veered right, because that trail looked like it went the way up. Then I encountered another trail junction, and then another. Every so often there was a sign indicating the direction to Ellie Lane, but no signs indicating how to get to Iron Mt. The trails I hiked went up a hill, down a very steep path into a valley, then up and across a small creek, where I finally made it to a trail at the crest where there were at least some other hikers. From there the trail winds back down to the junction at the midway point of the Iron Mt. trail. I had been hiking for 90 minutes at this point, and I still had 1.5 miles to the summit. The entire hike took over three hours (I took the short way back down), and my legs are hating me right now. So in return for their effort, I'll watch football for the next six hours sitting in my Lay-z-boy.