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From the west side Mount Falcon parking lot I headed down Parmalee Trail. This trail traverses the southern side of the mountain. I had started out in my new snowshoes thinking this would be a great shoe day, but that's not how it turned out. About 400 yards into the hike I found there was too little snow and strapped the shoes onto my pack and hoofed it in boots.
At the start the trail drops over 500 feet while working the way around the south part of Mt. Falcon. This was a really neat area, the trees and trails were covered in snow. For the most part it was a well packed trail, so I'm assuming this area is heavily used. About a hour into my hike I had a mountain biker come down the trail. I had never seen tires that fat on a bike before, not a chance in hell you would catch me doing that.
After the loss of elevation I made the round about back up to the summit of Mt. Falcon. There was a need little shelter on the summit. I don't think it was a fire lookout, but the views into town were good. After I had a snack I pulled out the GPS and headed to a geocache.
On the way to the cache I ran across the Eagle Eye Shelter. This was a old cabin back in the day and now just has a few tables inside. The view towards the divide from there were pretty amazing. I finally found my geocache and started after a couple more. These took me off course quite a bit, but I had nothing but time to waist today. I ended up hiking all the way to the Summer White House site. This was neat, a lightning bolt around 1915 sometime burned it to the ground. This took me to another cache then a bit further down the trail I got a view of the Red Rock Amphitheater.
I had been out for a few hours now, so I started heading back to the parking lot. There wasn't much elevation gain so it was a nice stroll back. This was a neat area, but I think it's known more for the geocaches then anything else.
Date: 1/9/2012
Starting Elevation: 7,836 feet
Summit Elevation: 7,828 feet
Lost Elevation: 571 feet
Distance: 5.4 miles
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