Blind leading the blind to Oats Peak

I just ran a tough run up Black Mtn yesterday, but when I am in Morro Bay I take advantage of the opportunity to do as much trail running as I can.  So when Kim asked me to go for a run with her I said yes, definitely, heck ya and let's go do it.  I told her I wanted to run somewhere in Montana de Oro State Park so she said she would show me some new trails that had recently been completed and which she had run once.  Admittedly, she did say that she may or not remember exactly how they went but I was more than willing to go and just see what I could see. 


Valencia Peak as it appears from the road

So we parked the car at the Bluff Trail trailhead.  Though it was a little overcast we could see Valencia Peak in the distance.  Since we were going to climb Oats Peak, that meant that we would be going around the back side of Valencia.  We started up the Valencia Peak trail right across from the Visitor Center at the campground which meant that we immediately started climbing.  After passing the intersection of the Oat Peak/Valencia Peak trails we soon came to our first new intersecting trail.  We stopped while Kim thought about which way to go to continue to Oats Peak.  Decision made we headed up the trail but hadn't gone very far before she realized that this wasn't the correct trail.  So we turned around and went back down to the intersection and went the other way.  From that point on we kept coming to new intersecting trails and we would stop, look around and try to determine which of the trails would head in the direction we wanted to go.  It was definitely the blind leading the blind but we eventually got to a place where we could see Oats Peak in the distance.  Soon we met a hiker and we

The final ascent to the top of Oats Peak

asked her if she had gone up Oats Peak and which trail would go there.  She said no, she skirted the peak and looped around. So once again we made our best guess and headed up the trail.  This time we chose correctly and soon arrived at the final climb to the peak, a very steep and challenging climb.  When we finally chugged our way to the top we had climbed from sea level to 1831 ft in less than four miles.  We were now on familiar ground for Kim and she said we had two choices.  We could continue on to Alan Peak which we could see far in the distance, or we could take her new favorite trail which wound down the mountain and came out on the Coon Creek Trail, one of my very favorites.  This turned out to be a very rocky, windy single track that zig-zagged down the mountain, going ever downward with no level sections to take a break.  We finally came out on Coon Creek Trail, turned left and ran about a half-mile to the end of the trail and then turned around and ran the length of the Coon Creek Trail,

coming out at a rest area at the end of Pecho Valley Rd.  After a brief stop, we crossed the road and accessed the Bluff Trail which would take us 2-1/2 miles back to where we had parked the car. The Bluff Trail was very popular today, unlike the previous 7 or 8 miles of back country trail where we had run in to very few people.  When we reached the end of Bluff Trail I looked at my GPS and saw that we had gone 9.87 miles.  Kim looked at me and said, come on, we can do another .2 miles to make it an even 10 miles.  So we slowly jogged down the road to Spooner Cove where we dipped our feet in the ocean, thereby making it official that we had gone from sea level to 1831 ft in a little over two hours.  All of this and I only fell twice!  Awesome!!