Loca­tion map for Vol­can Sum­mit Trail.

Unusu­al weath­er is no stranger to Vol­can Sum­mit Trail in Julian, and when 95 degree heat was pre­dict­ed one late-Spring day in 2012, an ear­ly arrival to the trail­head helped spare some of the per­spi­ra­tion.

We squeezed our vehi­cle onto the east shoul­der of Farmer Road, about 3 miles north of town and the only imme­di­ate park­ing area that is made avail­able (a warn­ing: park­ing can be lim­it­ed on busy days). We then made our way by-foot-and-by-orchard some 900 feet to the east to the sign announc­ing the entrance to the Vol­can Moun­tain Pre­serve.

Just beyond is the mag­i­cal gate­way to the moun­tain, a sculp­ture cre­at­ed by area artist James Hubbell and itself a des­ti­na­tion.

Hubbell gate­way to the trail

Infor­ma­tion­al signs relat­ing to the ensu­ing hike are just beyond the gate. The Gate­way is a beau­ti­ful and func­tion­al entrance of wood carv­ings and a mosa­ic com­pass built from some of Hubbel­l’s most tra­di­tion­al con­struc­tion mate­ri­als, rock and glass.

The trail leads steadi­ly up, first through an oak for­est, and then into open grass­lands. On a warm day, be sure to car­ry plen­ty of water, as it can be hot in the open areas of the trail. The wind can blow briskly on one sec­tion of the trail, and be still on anoth­er. The trail divides part way up; we took the new­er side­hill trail on the right when going up, and the old dirt road on the way back down. The old road is a steep­er sur­face and can be slip­pery, although it is short­er in length than the side­hill trail. The rap­tors and rep­tiles tend­ed to be seen more on the old road, in fact a rather large rat­tlesnake crossed the road as an inter­est­ed hawk watched.

Clint Pow­ell is dwarfed in the boughs of Julian’s great coast live oak tree, Quer­cus agri­fo­lia, once the state record as mea­sured by him and sub­mit­ted to the Nation­al Reg­is­ter of Cham­pi­on Trees.

One rea­son to take this hike is to reach the com­fort­able hand-hewn bench at the top of the moun­tain.  Here is a hik­er’s rest­ing place in mem­o­ry of Clin­ton Pow­ell, nat­u­ral­ist and writer who lived in Julian his entire life, who hiked Vol­can Moun­tain count­less times from the Shire-like set­ting of his mead­ow home at the foot of the moun­tain, and whose efforts to edu­cate the com­mu­ni­ty about the envi­rons of Vol­can Moun­tain were cen­tral to the ear­ly for­ma­tion of the Vol­can Moun­tain Pre­serve Foun­da­tion and its sub­se­quent suc­cess. The rest­ful bench, fac­ing south along the the Pacif­ic Crest, is hand-carved by some of his many friends out of a cedar tree that grew near­by.

(Post update 6–2019:  The Clint Pow­ell memo­r­i­al bench was recent­ly refur­bished by its orig­i­nal wood artists, bring­ing back to life its carv­ings and the rich grains of its par­ent tree.   In the works—an upcom­ing post on this web­site: “A Trib­ute to Clin­ton Pow­ell, Julian’s Own Nat­u­ral­ist.”)

The late Clint Pow­ell at home in Julian at one of his many bird feed­ers, foot of Vol­can Moun­tain.

The ele­va­tion gain from the gate­way at 4,175 to the brow just above the memo­r­i­al bench, at 5,340, is near­ly 1,200 feet. A leisure­ly 2.5 hour ascent with equal time for the return was the per­fect pace for a hot day while afford­ing time for some of the pho­tographs seen here.

Being late spring, there were still flow­ers bloom­ing, espe­cial­ly in the low­er parts of the trail. Some of the flow­ers we observed were mule ears, mon­key flower, white sage, mari­posa tulip, buck­wheat and clarkia. In the open grass­lands area there were cream cups (mem­bers of the pop­py fam­i­ly) bloom­ing in the mid­dle of the trail. The stun­ning pur­ple mari­posa tulips, the vari­a­tion sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly called Calo­chor­tus splen­dens, were still in bloom, inter­spersed among the high grass­es.

A Clarkia blos­som along the trail.

Two of Julian’s winer­ies can be seen west of the trail.

Our return was all down­hill. Near the bot­tom we could hear music com­ing from the Mengh­i­ni Win­ery, where a music fes­ti­val was hap­pen­ing that after­noon. It felt good to sit on the Tus­cany-like back porch of the Mengh­i­ni Win­ery, enjoy­ing a bit of refresh­ment and music. And with the lit­tle lunch­es we broke out from our cool­ers, well, we added back all the calo­ries we had burned on the hike.

Clarkia and win­ery pho­tos by Bar­bara Swan­son, used by per­mis­sion.