Friendship and Five Oaks on Volcan Mountain
Some mornings you wish to put on repeat. Yesterday's was one of them.
At the start of fall -- the false fall, where temps dip a day or two and then shoot back up to unbearable -- my friends and I created a master list of hikes we wanted to do when mornings cooled for good. I created a Google Doc and "as an example" filled the first set of tables with a hike at Volcan Mountain near Julian, with breakfast at a downtown diner afterward. Julian, for the uninitiated, is a popular, post-Gold Rush mountain town with a quaintness we city folk crave. Nestled in the Cuyamaca Mountains, one of the area's bigger natural attractions is the Volcan Mountain Wildnerness Reserve.
My longtime hiking pals Deborah and Mary and I carpooled to the trailhead in Mary's year-old Honda Passport. There was little traffic along CA 67, 78 and 79 at that hour and we found ourselves pulling on our packs and adjusting our poles at the same time a festively dressed group was embarking on a holiday hike. It was a big group and something about them seemed familiar, so after I overheard a snippet of conversation while using a portable toilet, I realized I'd actually hiked with some past members of the same Chula Vista hiking group. Small world.
Here's how I knew before starting this was gonna be one for the books (er, blog): The entrance. It's this beautiful wood and metal sculpture created by local artist James Hubbell.
There are two main trails to the summit, and we chose the more scenic route up, turning right about .6 miles from the road to start the Five Oaks Trail. The 1.2-mile single track was created by the California Conservation Corps in 2003 and parallels the less-pretty-but-more-direct Volcan Mountain Trail. The alternate route was named for the five different types of oaks the Corps found as they blazed. I later learned there now are nine different varieties. And beautiful manzanita with variegated trunks and branches that catch your attention.
The trail is rated as moderate on most hiking sites. I concur. Deborah struggled with the thinner air, and I took longer than expected to warm my fingers despite my insulated gloves. Much of the trail was shaded that early in the morning, but every once in a while we'd hit a scenic overlook (i.e, no trees) and briefly bathe in the rising sun's warmth. Plants and scrub were coated in heavy frost on that initial, fairly rocky stretch. I was glad I brought my poles.
Mary doesn't do poles. The woman is incredibly nimble on her feet and carries a very light pack. Deborah and I tend to overpack, just in case someone needs a broken bone kit or emergency blanket. We always carry extra water too, should we are left to wait for a rescue crew. Such scenerios are no longer beyond the realm of possibilities at our age.
Everyone's nose ran as inhaled freezing air moistened with each exhale. We stopped often, to admire a view and to give the lungs and lower extremities a rest. We hid our disappointment that an hour in we'd only climbed 465 of the eventual 1,300 feet to the summit. But, really, no one was in a hurry.
The second half of the hike is more exposed, which we appreciated more after stopping to remove a layer or two. The holiday hikers had passed us early on, and now we could see them nearing the summit. We were already 90 minutes in with a challenging ridgeline ahead. But none of us came this far to turn back now.
Slowly we pushed on, documenting dreamy landscapes and scouting for the perfect moon shot before it disappeared entirely. If there was a side viewing trail, we took it. I was surprised by a thicket of firs I misidentified as the Douglas variety. The randomness brought me back to my late grandmother's house in Westerly, R.I., which had been lined with the same type of tree.
More than two hours and 2.65 miles later, we made it to the peak, shrouded by trees and rocks near a metal picnic table and kiosk detailing birds of prey. We snapped the requisite photo of the geodetic survey metal disc and listened to the holiday hikers reveling nearby. We couldn't see them through a thick curtain of conifers, but they were a boisterous bunch. Their gaiety was contagious.
We took little time to celebrate our own accomplishment before starting back down the less picturesque and slightly steeper main trail, encountering several families, couples and solo hikers heading the other way. We watched our step now that persistent sunlight had converted frozen dirt to tacky mud. We talked about a range of topics, including the latest third rail of casual conversation: Elon Musk. We stood lookout while one of us (not me!) peed. If I was in the lead, I talked loudly so the others could hear me. This despite me not that long ago asking everyone to stay quiet on trails. One of us doesn't believe in protest by boycott, at least if ice cream is involved. This intrigues me even a day later.
I may have brought up our slow pace and finish time more than warranted. Then I tried to cover by saying how, just like in marathons, the people who take the longest are also the sorest the next day and isn't that amazing -- they stick it out despite all odds.
Speaking of amazing, we finished with the holiday hikers, who'd climbed, partied at the top, and descended in the same time it took us to do the five-mile loop. Three hours, 11 minutes without the stops and closer to 4 hours with the clock constantly running, in case you're wondering.
We congratulated each other on no one falling (just two close calls) and considered an invitation to join the other hiking group at Jeremy's, a farm-to-table restaurant a few miles away. Instead, we stuck with our original plan, only to find downtown Julian swarming with cars and crowds. Mary did her damndest to find a place to park and did not deserve the horn beeps, tailgating, and finger gestures of the car behind us.
We settled on lunch at a farmhouse-style restaurant in Santa Ysabel that I'd visited during a trip with my husband back in 2008. We shared our dishes, rolled our eyes at the slow service, and overtipped. One of us didn't hesitate to go talk to a group of elegantly dressed women in all white enjoying a belated Friendsgiving at an adjacent table. We walked over to Dudley's for bread and other bakery items and got a stranger to photograph us sitting on a bench.
Throughout the day, we kept commenting on how nice this had been. How perfect the weather was. How wonderful the hike. How even with the crowds and parking shortages, this really was an ideal daytrip. I think I know why, and it really has nothing to do with the conditions on Volcan Mountain. Hikes like these are memorable not so much because of how we experience them, but who we experience them with. These women let me babble and not once pointed to both my "be quiet" hypocrisy and vow at the onset to not talk too much. They constantly checked to make sure everyone was comfortable. And we all speculated on how sore our quads and toes would be tomorrow, but right now lets fill our empty bellies because we forgot to eat a snack.
That's why, years from now when steeper hikes like this one are beyond my capabilities and common sense, I'll pull out this day from a thinning carousel of memories. And, yes, I'll put it on repeat. Not because I so enjoyed climbing Volcan Mountain, but because of who I had the privilege to climb it with.
