First Hike In Southern California - Mishe Mokwa Trail

Since moving down to Southern California at the end of November of 2009, I had not had the chance to go hiking until this past weekend. In the intervening two months, my legs have gotten used to not moving much, and I figured that I should get moving again. Consequently, I joined the Thousand Oaks Hikers Meetup group - http://www.meetup.com/TOaks-Hikers/

Frankly, I prefer to hike alone, but I do know that hiking alone does carry some additional danger. Also, since I am not familiar with the trails in the area, I figure that I should tag along and familiarize myself with some trails before I try to hike alone, hence the hiking group.

This past Saturday, February 13, 2010, I went out with the hiking group to the Mishe Mokwa Trail. It's a relatively short hike - only about 7 miles, and a bit over 1000 ft of elevation gain. Still, it was a nice hike on a beautiful Southern California day - about 60~70 DegF, perfect weather for a hike. With the sun out and wind blowing, it was neither too cold nor too hot to hike. I gather that the weather I experienced was the reason that people pay to live in Southern California. While the rest of the country was buried in snow, I was enjoying a Saturday morning hike in perfect weather.

Here are a few pictures of the scenery.







At the first rest stop, we found a tree branch that was swarming with what appeared to be Lady Bugs. Then I remembered reading about the fact that lady bugs don't swarm. Sure enough, after I returned from the hike, a quick search confirmed that these are in fact Asian Lady Beetles.



Here is a closeup of the Asian Lady Beetle.



When we were resting on top of the Tri-peaks, we saw two prop planes doing some mock aerial battle.



I thought that they looked like WWII Era P47 Thunderbolts, but after looking at the close-up, I was not sure what these were anymore.



On the way back down, someone noticed some rock climbers quite a distance away.
I took some pictures - here one zoomed out to show how far away we were.



Here's one zoomed in and cropped to show the rock climbers on the sheer rock face. I didn't bring my Canon DSLR camera on the hike, since I wasn't sure that I wanted to take the DSLR camera hiking. So I took the Canon PowerShot A640 instead. I was surprised that these pictures turned out as well as they did from the point and shot camera.



Overall, it was an enjoyable hike. I will go on another hike with the same group in March. Then perhaps I'll strike out on my own hiking alone again.