Circle X Ranch, Grotto Trailhead — Attraction in Rolling Oaks Ranch

Went here March 2022. Had been before a few years earlier and jogged down the path thru the meadow down to the waterfall and back. Easy enough. This time though, I got disoriented……it was a random morning hike.

While heading back, I went up a trail I thought went back to the trailhead, except it wasn’t much of a trail. I like kept going, with a damn stick and in good shape but just kept climbing. Pretty soon I was over 1000ft up and high enough and steep enough incline to fall and die. I kept seeing what I thought were trails and would climb over but soon enough it was either keep climbing or else. I yelled out a few times and one time someone actually answered. But couldn’t really hear each other… kept climbing. Hit what I thought was a summit, nope just a ridge. Did that again and was on basically animal trails now. I don’t know how far up I was. While climbing and basically hugging the mountain and grabbing bushes and using the stick I hit kind of a flat area and could stand. At exactly that point I heard a chopper going thru the vista. Was high enough to where I heard mountain birds near their nests and sh**. The voice from earlier must have called them because my phone fell out of my hoodie pocket about an hour earlier. They saved my azz. They looked at me and were talking to each other about how far up I had made it. Stupidly. If nightfall would have happened and I would have ran out of my water who knows what would have happened. It was pretty dry up there. If anyone knows the area very well and knows which mountain I get lost on please let me know here. Close call, and thanks to those guys that picked me up off of...

The trail itself is fine. There is some shade and it is mainly downhill on the way there and uphill on the way back. The grotto is cool although at this time of year, August, there is not any water there. We also stayed at the campground. The awesome things about the campground is that it is only one spot so your group takes it over and does not have to worry about other groups. The downside is that the spot is hot in the summer and there is little shade covering the vast dirt patch that the campground is. They do provide many nice picnic tables and charcoal grills, and the bathrooms are nice anf clean although rather stinky during certain times of the day. There were no mosquitoes in August but lots and lots of flies and hornets. Lastly the sky gazing was pretty great as we saw 4 planets in the sky at the same time but there is still a lot of light pollution from...

The hike is tougher then we assumed from reading the other reviews! It took us over 1 h to get to the grotto, the last bit we almost gave up as it was such a difficult rock climb for not such experienced hikers and kids (ages 7-11) and the last bit of the trail was not clearly marked, you kind of figure out your own way how to get down to the grotto by climbing reallly big rocks up and down. You need to wear good hiking gear to make it, its not a nature walk!

The hike back was more difficult as we were rushing to get out before nightfall and it took us about 1,5 h of fast walking to get back. The grotto was not very impressive so I would not recommend the hike for the grotto-experince (at least when there is not much water and too coold to get...