Black Mountain via the Nighthawk Trail

We loved the views from this 4 mile hike! Well worth the 2-hour roundtrip. We parked in the Hilltop Park parking lot (plenty of parking and restroom facilities) and headed up the Nighthawk Tail. It’s a fairly good incline and no shade, but very enjoyable since there are views all around, especially of the ocean. There a couple offshoot trails that came up on the right, but we continued on the trail over a mile until we came to the option for Miners Ridge Loop Trail. We decided to forgoe the loop and headed left up the trail to the summit .08 miles. This is where it got steeper and the trail rocks a bit bigger, just for a short time. Then, we reached another fork in the road (Miners Ridge Trail again) where we headed right up to the summit. Just before the summit, you have a couple options to go straight up via a narrow path of a few feet or head right around a longer loop that wraps around the base of the multiple radio towers/disks. We did the latter, snapping photos of the mountain/ocean views in all directions.  Fun to see places we’ve already hiked...Iron Mountain, Mt. Woodson, the Fortunas, as well as those in our future...Mt. El Cajon, perhaps! We had a clear day and could even see downtown San Diego and snow-capped mountains to the north and northeast! After refreshments and posing for the camera for 15-20 minutes, we headed down on the trail for a short bit, staying right on Miners Ridge Trail for the jaunt down alongside Black mountain. Nice views on the way down! We stayed on this trail for about a mile, til having the option to head left into a isolated neighborhood of homes. After strolling past several homes, we found McEntee Street which inclines up to Oviedo Way and Hilltop Park. Next time we’ll do the full loop and add an extra mile or so to the hike, now that we have our bearings on this one! Glad we brought water. It felt toasty on the way up! (A day with a high of 79*.) We started at 9:45am and finished at 11:45 am. Would highly recommend this hike to anyone entertaining visitors or just wanting a fairly moderate hike with captivating views! Final thoughts: Study the trail map before you go! (20180114)