Doane Pond in Palomar Mountain State Park

After the new year, we wanted to continue our holiday ritual of tackling more difficult hikes outside of the city. We searched what is now simply known as "the book" & decided we'd head out to Palomar Mountain for a nice mountain hike. It turned out to be a beautiful day full of lots of surprises (some good, some not!) and two separate hikes (see Love Valley Meadow hike here).

• Trail: Doane Pond and fire access road
  
• Location: Palomar Mountain State Park
  
• Length: 1 mile out and 1 mile back
  
• Hike time: 1.5 hours
  
• Terrain: snowy!
  
• Path visibility: very clearly marked road
  
• Difficulty: easy
  
• Cost: $6 to enter the park for the day
  
• Highlight destination: seeing snow in San Diego, followed by the view from the mountains
  
• Beware: dogs are NOT allowed on any of the formal trails in Palomar Mountain State Park, and snow greatly reduces visibility or normally well-marked trails
  

We headed out to the mountains late in the morning on Jan. 2, 2009, amidst a heavy fog in San Diego. We had thought it would burn off by 11 a.m., but by noon we still saw patches of it. The drive to Palomar Mountain is a long one, but it got more & more gorgeous with every mile. We say this all the time when we go out on our little adventures, but we couldn't help ourselves yet again: We can't believe this is still San Diego!

Palomar Mountain State Park is nestled in high atop the Palomar Mountains, at more than 5,000 feet above sea level (possibly more but I lost count). To get there, we took highway 76 to S6 (also called South Grade Road), then following signs to Palomar Mountain State Park.

We were so surprised to see patches of snow along the drive up the mountain, then even more happily surprised once in the park to find most of the land was still blanketed with it. The roads were winding, but very easy to travel in any type of vehicle.

A not-so-fun surprise was the park's dog policy. After a long drive we were very surprised to get up to the gate & hear a park ranger tell us that dogs were not allowed on any of the trails. Luckily, they did have "legal" areas for dogs, such as walking around Doane Pond and a nearby fire access road up the mountain, but we would have been quite disappointed had we not been allowed to enter the park or take the dog out of the car at all. They gave us a special flier explaining where dogs were allowed (with map), and rational for their pet policy. Bottom line with Palomar Mountain is to just leave the pets at home so you can explore anything that you want to.

Because of the dog policy, we had to postpone our plan to hike on several of the formal trails mentioned by Schad in his book. In the end, we were happy with that decision anyway since the trails were covered in snow & it would have been very easy for us to get off course.

We walked around the beautifully frozen Doane Pond. Have I mentioned it was near 60 degrees that afternoon? After walking around the pond, we headed about 50 yards up from the pond's parking lot to a fire access road. Pets were allowed on that road, which went up the mountain with spectacular views for about 1 mile before reaching the turnaround point of the park boundary.

When we started up the snow-covered road, I was feeling pretty negative about the entire excursion and mad at myself for not calling ahead to ask about dogs. That frustration easily wore off with every step through the (sometimes as much as) 7 inches of undisturbed snow and beautiful lookout points into the valley below.

Whether I talked myself into it, I really think we had a much better hike experience up the fire access road then we would have trying to follow a formal trail in the snow.

And the views! Oh. The views.

So in the end, we had a hike full of surprises - some good like snow in San Diego, some bad like not knowing the park's dog policy - but it was an amazing & refreshing hike.

After the hike, we went down the mountain a few miles to an outpost where we had lunch at Mother's Kitchen, a quaint vegetarian restaurant.


Tipped off: Read about Palomar hikes in Schad's Afoot & Afield San Diego County, but had to forge a different trail because of their dog on the trails policy.