Hikes Near Fallbrook, CA, Including All Hikes In San Diego County And Many In Neighboring Counties

Quicklinks

Hikes sorted by travel time from Fallbrook: Sunrise, Local Noon, Sunset Times and
Times of Maximum UV Exposure
Current, 5 day, and several month extended
Fire Weather Forecast for Cleveland National Forest
from the California Wildfire Coordination Group.
How to convert to travel times from other cities National Forest Parking Fees (The Infamous Adventure Pass)
List of my hikes on the web sorted by date Links to other webpages with information about local hiking
Hiking Books for San Diego County and Neighboring Counties to the North Update log
Accuracy of Trail Mileages Hikes in the San Gabriel Mountains and the Angeles National Forest
Jerry Schad's Roam-O-Rama from the San Diego Reader Mountain Lion Attacks On People in the U.S. and Canada

Table of Contents

Purposes of This Site
Hiking Trail Descriptions on the Web
Hiking Books for San Diego County and Neighboring Counties to the North
Local Hiking Clubs
Links to other webpages with information about local hiking
Plague Note

 

Purposes of This Site

This site has three purposes:

 

Hiking Trail Descriptions on the Web

More and more sites contain hiking trail information, but it is very difficult to wade through search engine outputs to find the trail information when you want it. Further, it is quite difficult to search for a trail that you do not even know exists.

The main purpose of this site is to collect all the trail information and present it in a useful form. I have begun by simply collecting the information and putting it into a single table, organized by travel time from my house in Fallbrook. The information comes not only from websites, but also from newspaper articles and guidebooks. The information I have put online about specific trails comes mainly from newspaper articles and personal experience, concentrating on trails not found in any guidebook.

After I get a reasonably complete listing of local trails, I will produce a map showing the hike locations. This is probably the best way to find a trail, and it always amazes me when authors fail to do that. I will then present tables of hikes sorted by area and by mileage, more useful for those of you who do not live in Fallbrook!

The web is a wonderful way to find out the latest information about a given trail. Trails change, but guidebooks are often 5 years out of date. Guidebooks by necessity have to eliminate trails or cut their descriptions. The web has no such restrictions. Finally, the web can give valuable feedback to others for places where it was difficult to follow a guidebook author's instructions. However, until a lot more information is put on the web, I strongly recommend that you buy one of the guidebooks that cover areas you would like to hike.

The premier site for San Diego hiking trail descriptions on the web is now Jerry Schad's Roam-O-Rama from the San Diego Reader. There is a nice search engine on that page, and I recommend that you search there for information on any hike of interest. Schad's weekly hike column has been archived there since 1998, and the number of hikes is growing by 51 every year.

I have written up guides for ~10 local trails so far, concentrating on those closest to Fallbrook which have little information available elsewhere. I moved to San Diego County in 1994, so have yet to accumulate as much hiking experience here as I have in the Angeles National Forest.

There are a number of other sites which have information about trails, and I will index those sites when I have time. If you know of sites I have missed, please email me.

The tables below list all the hikes I know about within 120 minutes drive of Fallbrook, sorted by travel time from Fallbrook, including some hikes that are farther away. If you know of hikes that I have missed, please email me.

Hikes sorted by travel time from my house in Fallbrook:

The tables look best at a screen resolution of 800 x 600, which will line up the mileage, altitude gain/loss and trail name for rows with multiple trails in them. Otherwise, pay a little bit of attention to see what mileage and altitude gain/loss goes with what trail.

For completeness, I have included hikes without weblinks that leave from the same trailheads as other linked hikes.

With a little work, you can convert the times from my house to times from other locations.

Historical note: San Diego Sidewalk's Hiking Guide by Jerry Schad previously had put over 100 hikes on the web, with maps of trailheads, complete trail descriptions, and many pictures. The guides came from Schad's book Afoot and Afield in San Diego County, 2nd edition, 1992, published by Wilderness Press. Note that the third edition, 1998, is a much more complete, up-to-date book.

I had indexed all of the Sidewalk hikes in the tables as of 22 November 1997. The appearance of the Sidewalk Site in late November was the catalyst for the expansion of my site to include indexing all the available web hiking information. Previously, I had only listed the information that I had put online.

Unfortunately, the site was purchased by the SDUT, and as a result all of these hikes have been taken offline. The SDUT told me that these links were slated to be restored online at different urls, but two years later they still weren't online.

 

Hiking Books for San Diego County and Neighboring Counties to the North

The premier book on hiking San Diego County is Jerry Schad's Afoot and Afield in San Diego County, 3rd edition, 1998, published by Wilderness Press. I strongly recommend that you buy his book, which has good maps and good directions. You can purchase that book directly from Wilderness Press at 800-443-7227, or online from Amazon.com.

It is interesting to note that Schad's book was the most-bought book by San Diego residents from amazon.com in November, 1999. (SDUT 1/1/00, E1.)

The extensive 2003 fires have closed some of the trails even through October 2004, so you should check the status of any trail in those burn areas. See Fire Information And Forest Closures In Southern California.

60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: San Diego by Sheri McGregor, Menasha Ridge Press, November 2004 is the most up-to-date book. I haven't seen the book yet, but Sheri delayed her book in order to redo all the descriptions of trails burned in the extensive 2003 fires, so this is the book to consult for the latest printed trail information.

Walking San Diego by Lonnie Burstein Hewitt and Barbara Coffin Moore, The Mountaineers, 1989, has additional hikes with complete descriptions.

These books cover the areas immediately north of San Diego County:

If you know of any other books with good local hiking information, please email me.

 

Links to other webpages with information about local hiking

Sites containing future hikes are listed first, followed by other links in order of the amount of useful hiking information contained therein.

 

Plague Note

Squirrels infected with plague-carrying fleas were found at William Heise Park in Julian, Lake Morena County Park and Green Valley Falls Campground at Cuyamaca State Park in late August, 1999. Routine monitoring of squirrels nearly always turns up a few cases of plague in campgrounds in Southern California each year. Plague is a bacterial disease that primarily affects rodents, and can be transmitted to humans via infected fleas. No human case of plague has been reported in San Diego County (the paper was unclear whether this applies just to this year, or all years). Several cases of plague have occurred in L.A. County in the past.

The general recommendation is to avoid contact with chipmunks and squirrels, and report any dead bodies of such to park rangers.

Source: NCT 8/31/99, B3.

Update log

Go to:


Copyright © 1997-2004 by Tom Chester.
Permission is freely granted to reproduce any or all of this page as long as credit is given to me at this source:
http://sd.znet.com/~schester/fallbrook/hiking/index.html
Comments and feedback: Tom Chester
Last update: 18 October 2004.