Carmel Mountain Preserve, a 400-acre mesa top, is truly one of
San Diego County’s remaining natural wonders. When you hike its
several miles of trails, you will be treated not only to ocean
views, but to a landscape truly unlike any other. On its flat
mesa top, there are huge patches of a hard gray moss, called
ashy spike moss, that actually have an interesting purpose.
You’ll also come upon puddles of water that settle in the mesa’s
depressions, which are actually vernal pools — an amazing
environment that hosts species found nowhere else. The Chaparral
Lands Conservancy has called it “a special Noah’s Ark of nature
surrounded by suburban development.” Every type of vegetation
found on Carmel Mountain is “unique and imperiled,” it says. Its
habitats — Southern maritime chaparral, coastal sage scrub, wet
meadows and vernal pools — support more than two dozen rare
species, some of which have been listed as federally endangered.
Southern maritime chaparral is a habitat that occurs only on
weathered sandstone fo