North Fortuna Mtn. "Type-A-Positive" Cache
GCBCF - June 18, 2001
This was a great hike in the northerly part of Mission Trails Regional Park, City of San Diego. Compared to the crowds on Cowles Mountain (a little south of here in the same park), this was a slice of secluded heaven. I saw only one other hiker and one mountain biker in the 3-1/2 hours I was there. Dave, the Cache owner, did a nice job on the Cache page laying out a route for the hike which is roughly a five-mile loop up and over North Fortuna Mountain, starting at the parking lot at the end of Clairemont Mesa Blvd. in Tierrasanta.
Clicking on the thumbnail below will take you to a 300kb +/- image showing my GPS track and profile of the hike. the "GCBCF2", "GCBCF3", etc., are the waypoints for the route Dave laid out on the Cache page. If you take this hike, I would highly recommend following them.
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The photo on the right is a view of North Fortuna Mtn. taken near the beginning of the hike. The middle photo is a dried up vernal pool taken near GCBCF2 and the photo on the right was taken looking south at waypoint 004, which is shown on the topo map.
On the left is the cache on top of its rock. On the right is me, once again missing my head, holding the cache. If you click HERE you will see the actual rock where the cache is hidden. I was the first one to log this find and everything was in good shape. I didn't cut myself on any of the rocks thanks to Dave's warning. I did however scrape my knee playing mountain goat while seeking the Cache. I took a pocket level and left a yo-yo!
On the left is a view of SR 52 looking westerly from the cache site. On the right is the path along the summit of North Fortuna Mountain. Cowles Mountain can be seen in the background.
All in all, this was a very enjoyable hike which I will do again sometime soon.