April 22nd to 26th, 2020
48 miles, 7,000'
I'd now been backpacking the Condor Trail since April 9th. I'd started at the northern terminus doing 85 miles Section Hiking The Condor Trail: Bottchers Gap to Kirk Creek and then when they closed some of those trails I jumped south for another 58 miles Section Hiking The Condor Trail: Cuesta Pass on the 101 to Adobe TH on the 166.
Now I only had about 5 days left before my Pacific Crest Trail plans were starting. Jen and I had booked an Airbnb for a week starting on April 27th so that I would have a chance to recover before kicking off what was potentially 5+ months of nonstop hiking on May 5th.
I'd originally eyed continuing the last section and coming out at Manazan but Brian Sarvis had described the trail as involving some significant bushwhacking and as much as I was enjoying the solitude I was really hoping to get in more hiking and less manual tick removal to better prepare for the PCT.
I also debated doing Piedra Blanca to Lake Piru allowing me to see the southern end of the trail but that also reportedly had some bad sections.
I decided to do the section from Tina / Lower Rancho Nuevo along the 33 down to Piedra Blanca aka the trailhead most people use for Sespe & Willett Hot Springs.
So this time I did the yellow section of the map above and while there was still some significant brush and an ungodly amount of ticks it was another enjoyable section of the Condor Trail.
- Posted By: Matthew Hengst
- 0 Comments
