I’ve been working on a small list of peaks that were on the original San Diego 100 Peak List,
and one up in Camp Pendleton, Margarita Peak, has been bugging me for a while. So, I called John and he found a day for us to hike when there was no combat or artillery practice in the area, which is a good thing for hikers. We started out with a nice, but very foggy 4WD through the Marine base. Once we got above the fog, we ran into some of the buffalo that roam a remote part of the base. The ~50 head herd is a pure herd that’s been there for years and has never been contaminated by contact with cattle, so it’s one of the few that is considered a pristine herd. They just looked at John and me as we took pictures, but we didn’t want to get too close.
We found the bushy trail head and started up the mountain. It wasn’t but 20 minutes later that we were on top. At least I have one more of the original 17 peaks that I needed. There are 5 more in the desert that would make a fun and difficult cross country bushwhack loop that I need to schedule for the winter.
It was just such a short easy summit, we decided to make a 4WD adventure of the morning. John had not been in that remote part of the base for a while, so we were just winging it for navigation. We passed several of the training sites in that part of the base. We ended up at a cliff-out on a firebreak trail and had to retrace our drive. The Tacoma handled the very steep firebreak with ease.
Overall a good morning and thankful we did not provide any target practice for the Marines. (Click on any picture to enlarge.)
