Me and a friend drove to the end of cone peak road via Nacimiento rd. From there we hiked the coast ridge trail almost to where it met the Gamboa trail. We took a small trail to the West and hiked along a beautiful ridge, southward, all the way to cone peak. The look out is beautiful but we didn't want to camp next to the building so we hiked down to Trail spring camp. The trail was clear to the camp and you have to walk along a dry creek bed for a little while and back to the trail to get to the camp. It started getting dark so we put on our head lights. We made it to camp, had dinner and slept in our bivies on a clear night. Around 3:30am we woke to the sound of what we thought was a lion. It was making a crying growl about every 2-3 minutes. We never saw it but it sounded close. I was glad to be with a buddy. We fell back to sleep and awoke around 7:00 made breakfast and bushwacked up Gamboa trail back to Coast ridge trail. Gamboa trail is pretty overgrown but passable. Then back to the Jeep. What an exciting weekend. The ridge we walked was a huge short cut and so beautiful. Overall highlights were the ridge walk, the lion, and the Cone peak, in that order. The ridge has an old wire that leads most of the way. Maybe it was used for communication when the lookout building was being used. We called our trail the Wire ridge trail. Has anyone else ever gone that way?
