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| Hiking | 5.00 Miles |
1,800 AEG |
| | Hiking | 5.00 Miles | 4 Hrs 10 Mns | | 1.20 mph |
| 1,800 ft AEG | | | | |
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| partners | | It turns out that this hike description and one written several years after are basically identical. I went with this one. We didn't exactly hike a loop as we were not concerned with Sombrero, but Mike and I did hike Panther from the traditional Sombrero Peak Trailhead. Personally, I preferred Panther Wash, but maybe I would have felt different if today was a sunny 75 degree day, and not rainy.
Mike wanted to do a substantial hike, and I was okay with that if the forecast was good. It ended up being acceptable, but if I wasn't trying to pad my stats for 2021, I wouldn't have hiked today. Passing clouds, rain, and sun were normal for most of the day, and we had light rain on us during the hike. At the trailhead while waiting for Mike to arrive, I had about 5 minutes of steady downpour. For the people who love rain and hiking in it, great, but the trails here get muddy and very greasy with clay when wet. This isn't a great place to hike in rain. We went slow, as a result.
So, trying to find an alternative route to Panther, we started to hike as I normally would Sombrero, but instead of heading up the east slope towards that, we went north and started down to the north face of Sombrero instead, traversing near it's base on a horse trail from the local tourist dude ranch. The horse trail is in great shape and sees heavy use. We left that and followed a rough but well marked trail to the saddle, and then the summit of Panther. After we hung out there, we went back most of the same way, but left through Sanctuary Cove, instead of adding miles and a little AEG using the Scenic trails.
This was okay, but in general I like Sombrero by itself, or Panther using the Wash, or maybe the Roadrunner if I ever do that. Most everything was wet, including the rocks, and the trails were a little greasy, so we never would have done the loop as described. I don't really have any interest in that, in the first place. This hike was good enough for the day. I modified the existing official route to resemble what we hiked and pruned down my recorded AEG since 1,912' feels high. I only needed to record enough for 2021 so next year requires only 240,000' to join the 4 million foot club. If I can hike 240,000' next year, I'll be in. |
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Route Editor
Route Scout
). There were literally thousands of larger, flying black ants on the peak, so many it looked like the peak was moving. We went over to the other peak for Sombrero, but they were over there too (though not as bad), so we made our way down and started heading down the ridgeline for Panther.
