The trail climbs between oaks, brooms and scrub towards the upper part of the cattle pastures. The port of La Morcuera appears clearly at the bottom of the horizon, far above. In the landscape of the valley, the panoramic view covers a large part of the Cuenca Alta del Manzanares Regional Park up to the silhouettes of the city of Madrid, with the pyramid of Cerro de San Pedro in the center of the plain. On this slope it is easy to lose track of the path, there are many traces that the cows make but they simply go around in the meadow. The green and white paint marks on the SL-05 are key to completing the last leg of the climb. The hard slope ends at the Cordel del Puerto de la Morcuera pass, an old secondary cattle route used by shepherds to change herds between the Lozoya valley and the Cañada Real Segoviana, which passes through the municipalities of Soto del Real and Miraflores of the Sierra. The high páramos of the Sierra de la Morcuera and the Hoya de San Blas have been an important rangeland for sheep, horses and cattle in the Sierra de Guadarrama for centuries. The extensive fields of brooms and cervunales that carpet the mountainous mountains constituted an excellent summer pasture for the transhumant herds that have been roaming the cattle trails of Guadarrama until the end of the 19th century. At its best, the transhumant hut concentrated more than fifteen thousand sheep in the mountain passes and another ten thousand heads of cows and horses. Transhumant grazing has disappeared from the sierra. At present, only the cows of the local farmers go up every summer to the lowlands of the ports to take advantage of the pastures of the cervunal and piorno bushes. Scattered in strategic places at the headwaters of the valleys and the mountain passes, shepherds' huts and pens have been preserved, which served as shelter for the shepherds to protect themselves from the strong mountain winds and snow storms. The extensive reforestation of pine forests carried out in the mid-20th century was decisive in the transformation of important grassland areas into forest territory, accelerating the change from old traditions, linked to livestock, towards new methods of exploitation and economic development related to wood. and forest resources.