Hike Boy Scout Peak and Sitton Peak Cleveland National Forest, CA

Oct 3, 2025 — Sitton Peak is a modest summit tucked into Southern California’s Santa Ana Mountains. The scrubby hills composing the San Mateo Canyon Wilderness of the Cleveland National Forest would be unbearable to hike on without the extensive trail system. Unfortunately much of the area has been burned by one fire or another, including the high point Santiago Peak, but my hike today was green and showed no signs of the wildfires that ravaged the area.

I parked at the Bear Canyon Trailhead and hiked along the very tame Bear Canyon Trail, and I was pretty psyched about this mild stroll since I was quite hungover after a fun night in San Diego. The landscape is mostly typical scrub, but there were a few grottos housing shady oaks.

After roughly two miles there’s a junction with the Morgan Trail, which leads north toward San Mateo Peak. I stayed straight along the Bear Canyon Trail, and at around mile 3 I reached a somewhat confusing junction known as Four Corners, a convergence of a few fire roads. From Four Corners I turned onto the Sitton Peak Trail / Truck Trail.

The abandoned doubletrack ascended to the shoulder of Boy Scout Peak, which does not have an official trail to its summit. However, with over 300 feet of prominence it was a true peak, so I couldn’t willfully bypass it. On my ascent I started away from the official trail at the southern saddle, but on my way back I found a much better social trail that required less brush to push through located about a hundred feet east of the saddle. Either way, there’s enough of a route to reach a false summit, and then there were various options to traverse the flattish summit area to the high point.

Back on the Sitton Peak Trail, I descended a few hundred feet to the base of Sitton Peak. A sign marked the spot to leave the old roadbed and take a steep, eroded side-trail to gain the summit. This section was notably different in character from the rest of the hike due to its abrupt change in steepness. At the summit, Sitton Peak’s summit rocks offer a lovely panorama of the ridges of the San Mateo Canyon Wilderness, the Santa Ana Mountains, and on a clear day, the Pacific Ocean.