On May 15, between 8:00 and 11:00 a.m., head east on Otay Lakes Road (roughly 3 miles past the Lower Otay Reservoir) to the Thousand Trails RV Park, where you can begin your accent of Otay Mountain on Minnewawa Truck Trail. Volunteers will guide you and provide maps from here. The earlier you go the better the sunrise views over the entire South Bay/Tijuana region. This drive will drop you off in East Otay Mesa and should take 1 hour. The views along the way are magnificent. If you have the time, I would suggest going down the opposite way you came up. Both sides have awesome views of different parts of San Diego County.
From the cache site you will be looking down into Copper Canyon. The largest and maybe the steepest canyon on Otay Mountain. The international boundary is at the very bottom of the canyon. From various pull outs along the way you can see the ocean and even downtown San Diego. On a clear day from the rights spot you can even see the Mormon Temple in La Jolla.
Once on the trail you can stop at a square cement building near Doghouse Junction and walk out to the northwest. Here you will find two W.W.II bunkers that were used to watch the ocean for incoming enemy ships and planes. If you come up from Marron Valley you will have to continue west past the cache site.
If you come up Marron Valley, you can take the northern road at Doghouse Junction andfind a small memorial site where, on Saturday, March 16, 1991 at 1:42 a.m., popular country singing star Reba McEntire lost seven members of her band and her road manager in an early-morning chartered jet crash following the entertainers performance at a private concert for IBM executives the night before.
Earlier in the day, after the performers had disembarked at San Diego's Lindbergh Field, the twin-jet Hawker-Siddeley DH-125-1A/522 aircraft (N831LC), chartered by Prestige Touring in Dallas, Texas and owned by Duncan Aircraft Sales of Venice, Florida, was flown to Brown field, a former naval air station southeast of San Diego, since a late, post-concert departure was planned and a noise curfew would be in effect at Lindbergh Field at that hour. McEntire's next scheduled performance was set for the following evening in fort Wayne, Indiana, and after the San Diego show her band members boarded the aircraft at Brown Field for its flights to Fort Wayne, with a planned refueling stop in Amarillo, Texas. Approximately two minutes after taking off at 1:40 a.m., the aircraft, flying at an altitude of about 3,400 feet, crashed near the top of Otay Mountain approximately 10 miles northeast of the airfield. Killed in the crash were bandleader Kirk Cappello and members Paula Kaye Evans, Michael Thomas, terry Jackson, Joey Cigainero, Anthony Saputo and Chris Austin. Also killed were McEntire's road manager, Jim Hammon; the pilot, Donald Holms; and copilot Chris Hollinger. Additional members of the McEntire entourage had boarded a second aircraft that departed Brown Field about three minutes after the ill-fated jet and did not witness the crash. They learned of the tragedy when their plane made a refueling stop in Memphis, Tennessee. McEntire and her husband/manager, Narvel Balckstock, who had elected to remain overnight in San Diego before flying to the Fort Wayne concert engagement the next day, were notified of the tragedy not long after in occurred. A number of factors were behind the cause of the crash, including improper planning/decision by the pilot; failure of the flight crew to maintain proper altitude and clearance over mountainous terrain; and the failure of the copilot to adequately monitor the progress of the flight.
Fatalities: 10