This afternoon I hiked up Blodgett Peak. More accurately: today I got lost on a mountain but eventually made it to the top of Blodgett Peak.
The directions I had described how to get to the parking lot, what forks to take after leaving the road up the water tower, but ended with: “The trail gets faint and hard to follow. Proceed to the peak on one of the informal trails.” I should have recognized that as being a bad sign. Trails here tend to be granite gravel where the plants are worn away. Drainage washes also tend to be granite gravel with no plants. The map shows the trail loosely following a stream and approaching the peak from the north side. I followed a trail that split away from the stream (it had a couple switchbacks and couldn’t have fully been formed by washing out) until it entered a boulder field, at which point I lost it and just started climbing the 45 degree slope of the boulders. I ended up approaching the peak from the east having climbed up the south side of the ridge. The best part was that occasionally I’d see little cairns (intentionally placed piles of rock for markers) indicating that someone thought my route was a valid path (note the slope of the ground behind that pile of rocks):
Thankfully that route only required a lot of scrambling over rocks and no actually rock climbing to get to the top, though I think I would have gone much faster on a proper trail. On the other hand, I got some good views that weren’t as visible from the top, like this picture of the quarry a little south of Blodgett (also note the burned spots from the Waldo Canyon Fire):
The view from the top was rather impressive for only ~2500 feet of elevation gain from the trailhead:
On the way back down I actually found a well defined trail (at least until it got to where it blended in with the generally washed out terrain thanks to the burn scar). Where the trees were all burned and dead the underbrush tended to be doing rather well.
There was also plenty of wildlife to be seen. The magpies flew away before I got a good picture and the tiny birds living in the rocks of the boulder field were similarly camera shy, but I did catch some of the critters:
I saw a deer too, but that was in my rearview mirror in town while driving home. It made it across the street without getting hit.
I also decided it was worth standing in the middle of the stream (it was very shallow and my new boots are waterproof) to get this picture of the waterfalls:
As much as I’m sure it’s bloating the storage required for my blog I’m not regretting buying a new camera at all.