Palomar Mountain News

 Thanks to Brad Ells for sending this article our way. Most of our fall color is gone now but think many of you will enjoy the State Park info.

Palomar’s Boucher Trail has county’s best fall color

By Priscilla Lister,

Sunday, November 21, 2010 at 6 a.m.

Who says San Diego County doesn’t have seasons? Check out this fall color on Boucher Trail on Palomar Mountain.

 PALOMAR MOUNTAIN — Palomar Mountain is one of the best places in the county for fall color.

The trail to Boucher’s Lookout guided me along a surprisingly grassy green path through old-growth oaks as well as cedars and firs, where the golds and reds of fall cast a glow in the sunshine.  The black oaks, the most common deciduous tree in our mountains, are the only oaks that drop their leaves in fall, turning golden when they do.

The season’s reddest leaves of all are from another oak — poison oak, which is a shrub rather than a tree.

Lots of canyon live oaks are up on the mountain as well, and while you’ll see some leaves on the ground, these oaks are not deciduous. The leaves of the black oaks have large cutout lobes, while the leaves of the live oaks are more solidly oval with shallow spiny-teeth cutouts. The poison oak shrubs, which can also grow up the live oak tree trunks like vines, have less-lobed leaves that are more oval; they grow in bundles of three: “leaves of three, let it be.”

The acorns of the black oaks are said to be the favorite acorn of the Luisenos, who lived on Palomar Mountain during summers for hundreds of years. My hike started near Palomar Mountain State Park’s Silvercrest picnic area, where there is said to be a granite ridge about 15 feet long that features some 24 grinding holes the natives used to transform acorns into meal.

From the Silvercrest parking area, walk along the State Park Road a short ways (about 0.2 miles) until you reach a five-road intersection with Nate Harrison Grade and Boucher Road. In between the two one-way forks of Boucher Road (to your left) will be the trailhead for Boucher Trail.

Boucher Trail — for hikers only — climbs uphill in 0.7 miles to the fire lookout that bears the same name. This part of the trail is the best for those black oaks in their golden fall phase. You’ll also pass California incense cedar trees that you might mistake for redwoods, since their trunks feature similar reddish bark.

At Boucher Lookout, you’ll have a truly panoramic view over Pauma Valley to the west. From this elevation at 5,438 feet, on the clearest days you can see Catalina Island. This fire lookout, built in 1949, is still one of the most important in Southern California because of this sweeping view.

 The lookout is named for a Palomar pioneer, William Bougher, who homesteaded here when it was called Smith Mountain in the early 1900s.

Leland Fetzer explains, in his 2005 book, “San Diego County Place Names A to Z,” that the different spelling of the lookout from its namesake “probably reflects the pronunciation of the family name (BOO-ker). … Mapmakers seemed to have obtained their place-name information from interviews, not from printed sources.”

From the lookout, keep going on the Boucher Trail, which continues across the road to the north. This part of the trail features more amazing views down the mountain to the west, where you’ll see the winding Nate Harrison Grade Road below that commemorates the former slave who homesteaded on Palomar for decades in the late 1800s, raising hay and hogs “despite numerous run-ins with bears and mountain lions,” according to the state park’s webpage. The bears are gone but mountain lions still live here.

Where the trail intersects the Nate Harrison Grade Road, continue straight on the Adams Trail to Cedar Grove Campground.

 From the campground, I would have liked to continue on the Scott’s Cabin Trail back, but the ranger at the entrance told me that area of the park was effectively off-limits because workers were busy chainsawing and cleaning up dead trees. So he advised me to walk along the State Park Road back to the Silvercrest Picnic Area parking.

Priscilla Lister