For our fourth training hike we decided to try Iron Mountain. I'd been there once before and it was pretty nice and not as crowded as Cowles Mtn.
It's 6.4 miles up and back with a nice side hike to Ellie Lane Staging Area (parking lot) that's 6.6 miles out and back from the junction about 1.75 miles from the start of the Iron Mountain trail at Poway Rd. So if you do both, you get 13 miles in. There are actually a few other side trails in addition to Ellie Lane. One is the Ramona Overlook trail which will add another 3 miles or so.
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| View from the top of Iron Mtn. |
For this first hike, we hiked to the top of Iron Mtn. and back to the parking lot (to fill up our water bottles and use the restroom). Then we started to hike up again but decided to take off toward the Ellie Lane Trail. There is a junction about .5 miles out that meets up with the Ellie Lane Trail.
It goes past two ponds and then hooks up with the trail.
The trail goes up and over one saddle. It's pretty steep and rugged, but really pretty. After the first saddle it goes down through a valley where there are actually three different routes you can take.
We took the western-most route which goes down to a nice creek and a grove of trees. From there you can either go left and continue up to another saddle and on to the junction and then up to the top of Iron Mountain or you can take the wide road to the right which continues around the first mountain and ends up back at the first pond and eventually back to the Poway Rd. Staging Area.
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| Beginning and end of Iron Mtn. Trail |
Since this was our first time out on this trail we weren't sure how far we were from the junction to Iron Mountain so we decided to take the wide road back to Poway Rd.
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| Wildflowers in January! |
We got back pretty early so we did another hike up the right hand trail (not the main trail) to Iron Mtn. About another 3 miles maybe. All in all we think we went about 11 miles in 5.5 hours.
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