3-13-13 Las Trampas

On a beautiful Wednesday afternoon, I decided to go hiking with Darby. We've been avoiding popular hiking spots on weekends because there are often so many unleashed dogs, but I thought a weekday at Las Trampas would be OK. I wanted a moderate hike of about an hour and a half, so we hiked one of my favorites, a loop on the Chamise Trail, Las Trampas Ridge Trail, and Bollinger Creek Trail.

Right at the start, I noticed a couple of young guys with a golden retriever ahead of me, but they were far enough that I wasn't worried. The climb to the ridge is always hard work, but I was feeling pretty good, and made it up with only a couple of rest stops. I noticed the two guys had gone off trail to try to climb on the rocks near the top, so I passed them. I love the trail along the ridge, going up and down through grassland and woods with lots of wildflowers. This hasn't been a very good year for flowers, but there were enough to keep me happy.

As I headed down through chaparral into the canyon, I suddenly came across a woman with three large, dark shepherd type dogs coming down another trail. One of the dogs started approaching, and pulled out my can of Spray Shield getting ready for an attack. The spray, which I picked up at Petco, uses citronella, and is supposed to be a harmless dog repellant. This was the first time I had pulled it out and got ready to use it, but fortunately, the dog turned back and didn't come any closer. I yelled to the woman that my dog might not be friendly, but she seemed unconcerned and made no attempt to control the dogs. I waited for her to pass, and at that moment, the two guys with the golden retriever came along behind me. They put their dog on a leash to pass, but there was no problem with the dogs. I followed far behind the people and dogs, and was relieved when the woman took her dogs on the trail along the far side of the creek, away from my trail. I could still see the dogs running all over the place, sometimes far from the woman.

It's too bad that we have to worry about dogs so much on the trails. Of course, since Darby got attacked and injured a few months ago, we are especially worried -- probably more than we need to be. Most people with dogs that we run into are fine -- they put their dog on leash to pass, or at least keep them under control. The problem is that there are a few people who are not willing to do anything to control their dogs, and as we found out, it only takes one bad encounter to cause a lot of damage.

about 4 mi.