Introduction to
Field Guide To San Diego County
and
Hikes In San Diego County
Sites

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Note three important caveats:

• These sites are not nearly as comprehensive for San Diego County as are my San Gabriel Mountain (SGM) Field Guide and Hiking sites. It will be some years, if ever, before they attain a measure of completeness.

• Both sites are currently being slowly transferred from their previous homes (San Diego County Attractions and Hikes Near Fallbrook). Both were Fallbrook-oriented sites, and are being transformed into San Diego County-oriented sites. Until this notice is removed, some content remains available only at the previous sites. The first page was created here on 3/1/00. I only transfer a few pages at a time, usually only after I have hiked recently in that area or want to put some new information online, and rework the pages before transferring them. Hence this process will take some time.

• Some of the information linked here is contained within the SGM sites. The links on those pages won't take you back to this site.

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San Diego County has perhaps the richest diversity of habitats in the U.S., making it a hiker's paradise. Desert, mountains, sea shore, bays, rivers - we have it all. As a result, we enjoy one of the richest plant communities in the world. We have ~1,800 native plants, more native species than any other county in the contiguous U.S. Unfortunately, we also have more endangered and threatened species than any other county in the contiguous U.S. (Nature Conservancy, May/June 2000, p. 15.)

These pages are a guide to some of the natural richness of San Diego County. This url (tchester.org/sd) contains two major related sites: Field Guide to San Diego County and Hikes in San Diego County.

Field Guide to San Diego County Website

This is a field guide to many aspects of San Diego County. This site will contain webpages that include, among other pages:

• a bloom identification guide (exists now);
• information on ~50 points of interest (places);
• current and historical news;
• a bibliography of printed material about San Diego County;
• information about the weather; and
• information about some of the animals, such as insect pests, snakes and bears.

Hikes in San Diego County Website

This is a hiking guide to San Diego County. The site will include:

• a comprehensive list of hikes, presented via maps and tables of hikes organized by area;
• current hiking conditions, both in general and for specific trails;
• detailed hike writeups of my hikes;
• links to external webpages that contain at least some information about specific hikes;
• analysis pages related to hiking such as the accuracy of trail mileages, tables of distances and elevations to various peaks as seen from each other, and information about expected temperatures at various altitudes at various times of year (exists now); and
• collections of information related to hiking such as deaths from outdoor activities and a list of all mountain lion attacks in California (exists now).

All information on the web related to a given trail (conditions, web links, view plots, places, etc.) will be collected on a page devoted to a given trail.

See also a more complete introduction for this site.

Both Websites

Both sites are far from complete, even after they are transferred from their old homes, but will gradually become more complete after several years.

Both sites share the following files. All are found in the About This Site area of the main page for each site, except for the search page which is found at the top of the main pages:

• an Abbreviations and Sources page that defines the abbreviations used for phrases and sources of some of the information presented here;
• a Definitions page, giving definitions of some words or phrases; and
• a Style Sheet page, containing information about the style for the composition of the pages here. One item to note: we have intentionally not formatted our pages to occupy only a portion of a typical screen. I recommend that each reader size their browser window themselves to read the pages more easily.
• an Update Log, giving a record of what was added to both sites on a given day;

Both sites have no connection with any company or organization, and result from the personal work of the author, as well as the volunteer input from readers credited either on the page with their input or on the acknowledgements page for each site. The referenced links are also mostly the result of volunteer effort by many different webauthors, although a few referenced pages come from commercial efforts. No endorsement of any kind is implied by the existence of a link from these pages, other than our belief that there is some useful information contained within those links.

It is a misconception held by some people that webauthors somehow get a fee for every reader who accesses a webpage. This is true only for some commercial sites supported by advertising. In fact, in most cases, webauthors pay money to put their pages online and make it available to the public. Fortunately, the amount of money for a site like this is small, $275 per year for this site. In comparison, since the page charges for many major scientific journals are ~$100 per printed page, my SGM site alone would cost ~$20,000, making the dollar costs of a website essentially negligible!

Go to:

• Field Guide To San Diego County
• Hikes in San Diego County
• Table of Contents for all of Tom's webpages.