Las Tramps hiking

Rocky Ridge loop trail
We wanted to do a family hike, not any strenuous one. I didn’t want to take my little one on any strenuous hike. Ha can’t walk all those trail, he gets tired, he can take his paining legs. After searching I found out Las Tramps Mountain. In Spanish Las Tramps means “The Traps”. Actually till early 20th century, people used to put traps to catch elks, and big cats. Still there are few mountain lion were left, but there is no elks. 

The weather was very good, not cold or not so hot. As the sun rises early now we started from home early to avoid the mid day heat. Slowly we left behind the city and entered in the hilly grass land with few ranches. Houses started becoming scarce , grazing cattle started coming in view. We passed the barns, the grazing cattle,horses, the stables, and reach at the parking lot of the trail head. The parking lot was almost empty. Only few cars were there. We love that, as we wanted to hike on a not so crowded trail . 

Spear thistle

The trail was broad, with vast grassland on both sides. Due to lack of rain the grass started turning yellow. There were few big trees scattered here and there. However the trail was full of wild weeds, mainly with spear thistles with beautiful bright purple flowers. Though the flowers were very bright purple, but the plants were full of thorns. Anyway, the starting of the trail was almost flat, rather it was gaining height very slowly. Suddenly from one point , it started gaining height. Luckily, that of the trail was full of big trees on both sides. Though we were facing a little difficulty to go up, which was very usual, but we didn’t feel tired. Then again, the trail was flat, rather it was going a little up and down. Then again, it started gaining heights. That part of the trail had no big trees. Sun also started showing no mercy on us. My son started throwing tantrums. But we didn’t want to go back. Mr. Man told him that we must reach the peak. However, he didn’t want to do that. When daddy told that he would be first person to set foot on the peek, he regained his energy. However, after reaching the park, the trailhead seemed far away. Mr. Man suggested taking a narrow path which was going downwards very steeply to combine with main trail. I told him taking the longer one without knowing that the path was taking time to reach the bottom. In the mean time , we were confused which path to take, as we saw three-four offshoots of the main trail. Luckily, some hikers were coming from the opposite sides , and suggested us taking one path. That was going slowly downward. 

We were already out of energy, and felt that the path was taking longer time to reach. The path was going coward so steeply that it was difficult to control the speed.
Anyway, the hike was good, and we enjoyed it.