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May 01, 2023 — Slide Mountain Lookout is a peak with a fire tower at its summit and an excellent trail leading the entire way up. It has nice views down toward Pyramid Lake and into the Los Padres National Forest to the south. Google will try to navigate you to an illegal road in order to reach the trailhead, so instead navigate to this exit from Interstate 5 (34.56909, -118.68874) and then follow the old paved road to the trailhead. The trailhead is located at the Frenchman's Flat Day Use Area, a day use fee or pass required.
The first few miles of hiking is along a closed-off section of road (the old highway before I-5 was made). It's still used by workers to access the Pyramid Lake Dam, but hikers can't drive to the start of the trail. Piru Creek was flowing next to us as we walked, and nobody else seemed to be hiking the peak today. Austin commented he felt like we were in a post-apocalyptic world due to the cracked pavement along the road as we headed through Piru Gorge. After about 1.6 miles we located the start of the Slide Mountain Lookout Trail on the left, the dilapidated remains of an old road marked by a closed gate. We started up, the road winding around the slope at a fairly gradual grade for a few miles. The views down into Piru Gorge improved and Pyramid Lake came into view. Portions of this section traveled through trees, while the majority was through chaparral.
The road narrows into singletrack about 1.5 miles after leaving the old abandoned highway, and wildflowers hugged our legs as we continued ascending. One big switchback along the slopes and we were on the southeast ridge of Slide Mountain. The views south became amazing into the Sespe Wilderness, Lake Piru seen in the distance. We continued along the trail, which followed the ridge for a while. To keep the trail grade a more reasonable angle, it was built to switchback away from the steepening crest. Here we got views down toward Pyramid Lake. The trail then wraps around the southern slope of Slide Mountain before spiraling up and around to the fire tower on the summit. Our views were obscured by low-hanging clouds, but we managed to get down before the rain hit.
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