I had planned to hike Iron Mountain if the storm had passed and it wasn't too cold. So I slept in and around 10:30 in the morning I got ready and headed out. The parking lot was almost empty, which was a good sign that the trail would not be crowded.
The photo above is one I've never taken before, but decided to stop on the way down because the sun had come out and the contrast of the cactus in the foreground with the mountain in the distance made for a good photo.
This is a section of the original trail up the mountain. I now take the alternate trail that bypasses this rocky section. This was the first time I had seen the "improvements" made to the trail. They cut away all the brush on either side of the trail and it looks really ugly. I think enough people complained that "they" stopped the trail improvements last year.
There was lots of snow visible on the local mountains. Now, a few years ago after a bigger storm, there was even more snow, with a light dusting in Ramona. I was lucky that Cuyamaca and Palomar Mountain were cloud free and the snow was visible, plus, there was enough light from the Sun shining through the mostly cloudy skies to light up the landscape.
I encountered very few hikers during this hike. Only the hard-core hikers were out. I stopped more than usual on the way up to take photos. I used an app on my Android phone for the first time called My Tracks. It tracked my hike and saved the information so that I could view it in Google Maps and see how fast I hiked and what the elevation gain was - and more.
My hiking time was 2:20, with two hours of moving and 20 minutes of stopping. I'm really glad I took this hike on one of my forced-vacation work days.
