I found this trail years ago when I first starting hiking the Deer Creek Park area and have wanted to do it ever since. I could never get to it because I either wasn’t in town when it was open or not in shape enough.
It’s a long hike and we dropped the leaf at Hilderbrand Ranch Park and Lina dropped me off at Deer Creek. This is definitely the way you want to do this trail. It looks like it would be a loooong slog uphill for a long distance the other way.
I’ve been putting in the miles so I thought I was ready for this one finally, but it took a lot out of me for some reason. I felt fine as long as I kept moving, but I could never catch my breath when I stopped. I even took a 15 minute break around mile 7 or 8 and was immediately panting as soon as I started up again.
When I sat down at the end of the trail, I couldn’t catch my breath and my arms started vibrating uncontrollably. Turns out that’s a symptom of exhaustion or low blood sugar, but I’m not sure if it was the fact that I fasted for 36 hours before the hike or that we were in the middle of the worst air quality in the world because of the California forest fires.
The hike itself was long, but didn’t seem that bad while I was on it, and I did a couple of 8-9+ mile hikes a week or so later with no problems. I’m not sure what happened, but it was scary.
Here are the stats:
- Distance = 10.80 mi
- Elevation Gain = 1,686 ft
- Time = 4:03:39
- Avg Speed = 2.8 mph
- Min elevation = 5,610 ft
