Mesa Road Trail Offers Little-Known Access to Mission Trails

Santee is full of surprises, especially when it comes to wandering the city’s many trails. Most of the trails linked up with are ones that people are familiar with. But there is another, more hidden entrance into the park. 

Santee resident Winona Sollock told me about this trail. At the very end of Mesa Road after it changes from a paved road to a dirt road riddled with potholes, is a gate with a place to park.

“Walk up the path just a few hundred yards from the gate, and you’ll see a little waterfall,” she had told me.

The afternoon that I arrived at this of a trail, the air was crisp and cool after a two-week long siege of rain. Water was running in rivulets down the path. Cirrus clouds were spackled across the sky.

Hundreds of small birds twittered in the branches of chaparral as I began walking up the path. I heard the sound of water rushing before I actually saw it off to my right.

The from between some boulders down into a small pool. I stayed there for about 10 minutes, enjoying the music of the water and hidden birds. Then I got back onto the dirt path and came across a hiker who had come from a path on the right.

He said that it was his first day that on this trail, too.

“I went all the way to Cowles mountain,” he said. “I used to go up to Cowles Mountain from Golfcrest and Navajo on the other side. Better view up here, less crowded. From now on I’m using this trail.”

I took his suggestion and turned right on the path where he had been hiking. Immediately, there was a small footbridge over a stream that eventually cascades over the boulders. There was even a black box for mountain bikers to ring a pair of bells so that hikers and other bikers could hear them approaching.

The temperatures were getting cooler as the light waned into late afternoon. I continued walking up the path high enough that I could see the spread of Mesa Road and Mission Gorge Road below and hear the distant sound of dogs barking.

The smell of rain was getting strong again, so I made my way back down. Along the way, I met up with a couple more hikers. They stopped on the path with me for awhile to watch the way the clouds draped over the city.

Mesa Road Trail is a place worth checking out for a different view of the mountain that towers over Santee. I would imagine that it is at its best now through late spring.