Peak bagging Corte Madera and Los Pinos

Finally made it to San Diego's Half Dome, a granite mountain in the southern portion of the Cleveland National Forest! Woohoo...I lost my head!
The name Corte Madera comes from what the Spanish missions used to call the area: Rancho Corte de Madera. Rancho Corte de Madera was lumber yard. Corte means cut and madera means wood. The timber that built the original Spanish Missions headquarters at the Old Town San Diego came from Rancho Corte de Madera. 
On a clear day, the Corte Madera Peak with 4,588 feet elevation,  provides a spectacular view of the southernmost portion of Cleveland National Forest. This includes the Los Pinos Peak which the group of more than  20 hikers, plus a dog, also bagged. All in a day's work.
The peak bagging came with a fruit challenge joke from Jamie  as retold by Hema, the selfless organizer of the group. The previous days' rain that made the trails muddy made the hike all the more fun, about 13 miles!
According to the fs.usda.gov website, the Cleveland National Forest where the Corte Madera Mountain is used to be a domain of coastal Native Americans that included Kumeyaays, Luiseños, Cahuilas and  Cupeños.  Nowadays, the area is an  important nesting area for birds of prey such as the golden eagle, the peregrine and prairie falcons and the red-tail hawk.
The hike from the falcon nesting areas to the Los Pinos Fire Lookout Tower atop Los Pinos Peak at an elevation of 4,805 feet meant sharing the muddy trail with off-highway vehicles and dirt bikes. 
The fire lookout tower is a relic of long ago before firealarms were mandatory in any building structure. The tower stands out in the forest, its presence hardly known.
I was thinking of my conversation with Tina Chitura the whole time during the hike. I was just starting to hike then. Tina, who is originally from Zimbabwe, thought that we come from countries as pristinely beautiful as America.  But we hardly noticed because we were so busy trying to make a living.  Hiking would have been a trek from the farm to the market to sell a produce.  Women carried loads on their head, literally. 
Untouched and left alone, there, too, are wildflowers in Zimbabwe. They may not be bush poppies or creeping monkey flowers but they may just be as beautiful. 
And still, the hike to Corte Madera and Los Pinos mountains is another spectacular hike in the land originally inhabited by the Kumeyaays.


  
 

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