Category Archives: Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park

Hikes in Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, Foothill Ranch, California. Probably the largest category.

Music and Mountain Lions

Some of us collect anecdotes of stupid hikers at Whiting:

I met him just as he was coming off the Edison Trail in Whiting Ranch, a small, spindly man with no hair, shorts, a short-sleeved plaid shirt, and a pair of earbuds blasting Beethoven as loud as he could stand it. A few months before I had met a mountain lion on this very trail, so I stopped him.

“There’s deer up there at the end of the trail,” he said, waving his arm in the general direction of nowhere in particular. I have to admit that I was surprised that he saw them.

“There’s also mountain lion up there,” I said, motioning to his earbuds.

“Oh yes,” he shouted with a smile and went on his way.

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Dreaded Hill

Dreaded Hill, Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, California, July 25, 2014

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Heading off the Edge

Heading off the edge, Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, California

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Red Rock Canyon No. 3 - 8/7/2013

Red Rock Canyon, Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, August 7, 2013

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San Diego Gopher Snake
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Dreaded Hill

Dreaded Hill

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Spider Wasp

Birds subdued their calls. I saw no tracks other than boots and bicycle treads, so I dedicated the day to understanding the landscape. My pocket notebook was filling up with entries about the geology of Whiting Ranch — how the ridges north of Dreaded Hill came in waves, each of them consisting of a different geological formation. A loud buzz startled me from my observations. A blue-black insect the size of a bumblebee shot out of the sage scrub and zoomed down the road toward me, zigzagging before it hit me. I followed it — first by sight, then by foot — as it flew a little further and alighted on the stubble at the edge of the road.

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Portola Hills

Portola Hills

Portola Hills, June 13, 2014

Spring was well over by the time that this was taken but you wouldn’t know it by the calendar.

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Track of The Cat

Track of the Cat

Mountain Lion Track, July 7, 2014

Few people walk the Edison Road except diehards like me who can face a walk back uphill from a dead end. Few people means many animal tracks.

So the other day I discovered a bonanza in the dust. The mule deer which had been absent for several months were back. Their double half moon footprints crowded the edges of the trail (for some reason they didn’t like walking down the middle). Throw in some coyote and the x-shaped tracks of a roadrunner plus a possible bobcat and it made for a good day for tracking. After I climbed the hill from the cul de sac and started on my way back down the other end, I saw them. The first impressions left me uncertain. The loosness of the dust plus the waffle stompers of another hiker had obscured them somewhat. But after rounding the bend beneath the first electrical tower, I found hard evidence. They were about the size of the palm of my hand and there was no mistaking the rounded, bean-shaped toe prints: A mountain lion had followed the deer. A new apex predator was in residence.

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The Old Mountain Biker

Cactus Hill Trail

Cactus Hill, March 9,2014

Voices alert me that someone is around the corner or beyond the trees. I heard them as I walked down the Concourse Park Road into Whiting on Monday. I rounded a corner and found two mountain bikers — a young Asian man and a white man who was perhaps a decade or more older than me — resting in the shade of some oaks. The elderly biker leaned over his handlebars and panted hard in obvious distress.

“Are you all right? I’ve got a cell phone.” I said as soon as I got close.

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