Sunday we went for a hike and took Big Mountain Table via Wellbarn Road trail and did a little of the trail through Big Mountain Table Ecological Reserve.  Not that I’ve been in the area long, but we’ve done this trail before and I thought the top was referred to as Table Top Mountain. You’ll learn something about me soon…if I don’t know something, I go to trusted ole’ Google and when I typed in ‘Table Top Mountain Fresno’, this trail came up so I’m guessing it’s referred to as Table Top Mountain too!

The trailhead is located about 45 minutes Northeast-ish from Fresno near Prather and Auberry. It’s located at the very end of Wellbarn Road, which is off of Auberry Road.

The full trail is 7.9 miles out and back. It is rated as difficult and a mile of it is pretty tough. The trail is a dirt road so is very wide the whole way.

At the trailhead, there is a gate that you have to walk through and then you follow the trail/road in. It’s pretty flat for a couple miles.

 

Wellbarn to SJRT (San Joaquin River Trail)

At 2 miles in, the road will split; one going to the right, which will take you down to the San Joaquin River and is considered easy in terms of difficulty. This trail is 5.1 miles starting at the trailhead. We’ve taken this before and will again so we can get some pictures and a good post for you guys. We actually took this one for a night hike once, but didn’t make it to the river as we ran into a herd of cattle that were on the trail…so we just turned around…not about to start anything with the cattle.

Big Table Mountain via Wellbarn Road Trail

The road going to the left here at the split will take you up Wellbarn Road to Big Table Mountain. At this point you’ll get a little incline and then it’ll go back down and then…it really gets going up.

I’m trying to show the incline in some of these pictures, but they just don’t show it very well.

As you are walking up, look out over your right and you’ll get some good views of the river. These are good views, but wait till you get to the top.

You’ll go through two additional gates while on this trail before getting to the top.

Sometimes there are cattle roaming around, but we’ve never had a bad encounter with cattle on any trail we’ve been on and we’ve ran into herds a number of time, especially at night. This time we didn’t see any cattle.

When you get to this gate, you are pretty much there…

Go through and it will be pretty flat the rest of the time. You’ll get out into the open and it’s beautiful. You still have a ways, but this is all easy peasy now.

Keep following the trail and you’ll see the edge and a little side shoot trail that goes there. There is a picnic table there, but when we went this time, it was broke so who knows if it’ll be there next time.

This is the view!! Now, the first time we came up here it was sunset and that was gorgeous! I would highly suggest doing sunrise or sunset if you can, just for the beauty.

Someone made little sitting spots with the broken table pieces so we sat and enjoyed the views and got a few fun pics before we continued on. As we sat there, we weren’t really sure if we were going to go any further or not, but we did.

Last time we came, we stopped here and did not continue on so we weren’t sure what we was coming. In fact, we didn’t even realize the trail continued…we thought this was the end. We ended up only going maybe another 1/2 mile before turning around, but it was neat to walk through the reserve. Even with everything dry, it was pretty!

We turned back and headed back down. Down is a little tough in it’s own way because of the decline. It can be tough on the knees and ankles. We actually did a slow jog to help…to me it seemed a little easier to do a slight jog as I was looser and my body sort of went with the movements.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this in other posts, but Kobe does not do well in the heat and so he was dying as with the sun, it really warmed up. We had a lot of water for them, but he found some cool spots to rest on the way down too.

On our drive back home, we saw a plane flying a banner and turned to see what it was saying. Then we realized we were right by Jackson’s Roadhouse and decided to stop for a well deserved beverage. It seemed to be more of a biker bar as a bunch of bikers came in, but everyone was really friendly. We hung out for a bit and played a quick game of darts. We used to play darts in Nebraska and there just are not very many places that still have darts so it was a nice little surprise. They have a nice outdoor area with big firepits and picnic tables. They were serving tri-tip sandwiches so I tried one – it was pretty darn good. It was a nice fun little stop. Then we headed home.

Hope this gave you a good understanding of this trail and yea it’s a little tough for a mile of it, but it’s so worth it, especially for sunrise or sunset! Only suggestion is to make sure you have plenty of water.

 If you enjoyed this post, please pass it along and sign up for my newsletter. You’ll get a simple email whenever I post of our fun adventures showing awesome things to do within a tank of gas from Fresno