This scenario has happened way too many times to me. I find an inspiring mountain or mesa or whatever. I can find no trail on maps to get up it (or maybe i don't have a map available and am just guessing from driving on available roads in the area). I exhaust a lot of energy while i "bushwhack"/ scramble/ climb up the side of it. Once on top i find a nice trail i could have taken, along with some benches or sunbathers, and i feel like an idiot. People are certainly looking at me like i'm an idiot, or some kind of super extremist that purposefully makes things as hard as possible.
The most extreme case of this was on one of San Juan Islands North of Seattle. There was one high peak on this island and i tried driving around it but couldn't find any sign of a road before i called it a lost cause and decided to just go for it. I spent two hours climbing up rocky cliffs that were only a little less steep than the ones right next to where i started. Those had actual rock climbers on ropes. There were a few hairy spots but i eventually made it up. Just as i got to the top , very sweaty and exhausted, i encountered a wooden fence in front of a paved parking lot full of old people, some of whom were taking pictures of me climbing over the lip of these ledges. Great. It turned out the road to the top was just another 50 yards past the point where i turned around. At least i was correct in thinking it was the best place around to get a nice view of the island and Mt. Baker.
This past Summer i did it again when i decided to climb the Lionshead here in Alaska. I'd driven by it a dozen times and finally decided i had to see the view on top. There is no official trail, and the approach to the base forces you to kind of walk through a grey area of trespassing past some telecommunications buildings. Since there were no trails listed on any maps i decided to take a direct approach. I walked along a gravel road to it's terminus and then went straight up the side of the mountain. The vegetation was as thick as it had looked from a distance, and the mountainside itself was steeper than i had imagined. It was a hot day and it's hard to immediately engage in strenuous activity after an hours long drive. Fortunately it's not a long hike, only about 800 feet high on the climbable side.
Almost halfway up the side, in a rare clearing
I got to the top. The views were just as i had expected, and of course, there was a nice trail up there. I didn't follow it back because it went down towards some very vertical cliffs, but in the Fall i returned, and after a little investigation found the trail on the bottom, near the opposite end from where i started. The trail is a much, much nicer way to go. It's ridiculous how much better.
On one side the mountain drops straight down from overhanging cliffs. This side is far higher above the ground than the road side
Also on top was a strange partially mummified skeleton of a baby goat or sheep. It was completely intact, but obviously scavenged. I wondered how it died. It seems like a strange place for a goat/sheep to give birth because of a lack of shelter up there and only berries to eat (which wouldn't be around in spring). Plus, the mountain is well separated from other peaks, so i wonder if the baby was taken by an eagle. The corpse was small enough for an eagle to have lifted and dropped up there in the open near the edge of a massive cliff, a perfect dining area for a bird to be undisturbed. I would imagine any larger predator would have eaten the bones.
On the way down that day it was getting late. The trees are so thick you can't get a bearing, and i walked off down the wrong side of the mountain. The whole thing is connected to the gravel road i walked on by a kind of a saddle of land which drops off on both sides, and i went down too far on one side, so i had to walk back uphill some more to get back on track. I found a path that made it easier to walk through the woods. Unfortunately it was a bear trail. You could tell it was a bear trail because of the endless procession of bear scat that i kept having to step over. It starting to bother me because the scat appeared to be getting fresher as i walked further along the trail. Fisher was acting nervous too, so i started calling out to the bears and breaking lots of dead trees as we walked along. Line of site was very limited. That's another reason the actual trail is so much better to take.
The Lionshead isn't actually a mountain, because it was glacially created. Glaciers don't make mountains, although they make mountains look more impressive after they're done with them. I'm relaying this info based on a roadside sign i read last summer, so the details are not sharp in my mind. The rock formation exists because of old subsurface volcanic activity. An upwelling of magma changed the rock into a somewhat rare and very hard form of quartz related rock. As the valley was carved out the ice couldn't grind away the rock because it was harder than any of the other rocks around. When the ice receded it left this massive tower of rock in the middle of the valley. These days it's in pretty bad shape because the ice is taking a different approach. The ground on the top is divided into parallel fissures which are being driven apart by freeze thaw cycles. The whole thing is crumbling apart, it fared better when it was permanently encased in ice.
