Mount Sanitas and west

Last week I was looking at some of the OSMP maps, and I noticed that the trail going up Mt. Sanitas doesn't actually go all the way to the summit! It stops at a great vista that is 800' south of the true summit and one contour line (40') lower in elevation.

Our goal today was to find the real summit and explore some unofficial trails that also appeared on the OSMP maps. There's also a higher point marked 6979', aka "Upper West Point", aka "NW Sanitas" that we thought we might be able to reach. However, after hiking towards it for a while and leaving the OSMP boundary, it appeared that the 6979 summit (behind us in the photo below) was on private property and had at least one house on top.

The unofficial trails (perhaps soon to be designated trails) were really nice -- not at all crowded like the standard Sanitas trails, and not rocky. They'll be good to run someday. We had good views to the west of Sugarloaf Mountain, southwest to the Boulder Filtration Plant near Betasso, and south to Green Mountain.

We took a trail back down to Sunshine Drive and hiked down the road half a mile before picking up a trail that paralleled the road on the other side.

It was getting dark on the way back but we managed to get back to the car before nightfall. In all we covered about 6 miles in 3:15 this afternoon.