Mount Woodson & Potato Chip Rock

Mount Woodson and Potato Chip Rock, one of the most iconic hikes in San Diego County. The trail starts out easy enough, tracing the edge of Lake Poway before turning onto the Mount Woodson Trail and immediately getting to business — a steep, exposed climb with almost no shade the entire way up.

The lake views on the way up are worth pausing for on their own, blue water framed by dry chaparral hills, before the trail keeps climbing toward the radio towers marking Mount Woodson's summit at 2,894 feet. A trail sign marking the Mount Woodson Trail, the Warren Canyon Trail, and the summit junction is a good landmark that the real climbing is about to start.

Potato Chip Rock itself is exactly as thin and precarious as it looks in every photo — a narrow blade of granite jutting out over open air, just past a scramble over a large boulder to reach it. Worth the short wait in line to get out onto it for a photo, arms out over the canyon below, San Diego's backcountry stretching out in every direction.

A steep, sun-baked climb, but a short one by big-mountain standards, and one of those hikes that's as much about the single iconic photo at the top as it is about the trail itself.