Wall Point Road

Unless we get some rain next week, which it's looking like we may, the creeks will not be flowing on Stage Road...just some wanna-be mud.

But if you want some berries on the way to the finish line, there are some black berries, although these aren't ripe, but I did get another pic of ripe ones.

This is really low on the way up, but I see the summit over there!

Wall Point goes along the top of a ridge. You can see a bit of trail on the highest point in the right of this pic.

My shadow looking at how far away Castle Rock rocks are from where I am...I'm eventually going to be running out the valley past the rocks if I wanna get back to the car.

My camera batteries were shot, in fact the camera was only turning on about half the time, so I had to ration pictures...but I did go up and over that point. The trail actually keeps going up after that, even though it appears to be the highest point...it's not, so I kept going.

Um....yeah. There was a dried up puddle that had A LOT of tracks around it.  The first time through I pretended not to see anything....but when I was running back out I stopped to figure out a few things.  There were 3 different 'types' of prints. One was coyote (canine - it had one indent on the back of it's pad, and the 2 middle claws showed), one was bobcat (feline- had 2 indents on back of it's pad, some prints showed claws, some not, smaller prints than this one I have my hand next to), and then there were these prints.  By far the largest. Hard to see, but 2 indents on back of pad (feline), 4 toes spread out in a wider print, meaning unlike a dog, the 2 middle toes dont' stick out front, all 4 are more round and spread across.  Most cougar tracks do not show the claws....but these were deep, and showing claws, which probably meant it was running. While I would have liked to think it came through when it was muddy, the track wasn't smooth around the edges like it would have been in mud, it was crumbly, so ....probably after the ground was dry (meaning the past few days), and it came through after most of the bikes, since it was across and on top of the bike tracks. There's more pics of these tracks on the photo site.

This is by far the best mt lion print I saw. If you click on the pic and make it bigger, you'll see what I mean about it being a rounder print than what dogs and coyotes make with their longer middle two toes and claws.You can also make out the 2 indents that make 3 lobes on the back of the pad.  Also noticed that while I would have liked to believe someone just has a really large cat they took for a walk....all these prints did eventually lead off into the bushes and did not stay on the trail.

I'm running back out now, looking at the ridge and the trail laid out across it.

Definitely felt more like a back woodsy run than what I normally do, although in reality it's not that different from where I normally am. I think getting freaked out by the prints added to that....but it was a great run!! There's so much to explore on this Mt and every run I'm able to explore trails that are new to me make me realize how amazing this Mt is. Even though this was more remote and further than I normally run on the Mt, I did see a group of 7 female hikers out there, and one mt biker, so I wasn't really that alone! Not to mention there were most likely  a few furry friends in the bushes that I am grateful  stayed hidden!