Los Angeles County’s Terrain and Hiking Trails

Overview of varied topography and wonderful day hiking opportunities in Los Angeles County by John McKinney, Southern California’s hiking expert. Inspiring hikes in the mountains and along the coast.

I’ve resided in many parts of Los Angeles County: Hoover Boulevard near USC, Topanga Canyon, Whittier, Downey, Venice, East L.A. West L.A., Silverlake, Santa Clarita and Santa Monica. I’ve lived in neighborhoods where the people were as bland as the whitewashed walls of their neat stucco homes, and in neighborhoods where the sights and sounds reflected the full cultural diversity of the county. I’ve lived in some of the most park-poor parts of the metropolis as well as in some of its greenest parts with a nature trail only a five-minute walk from my front door.

Wherever I’ve lived—and where I haven’t—I’ve hiked, getting to know the splendidly diverse landscapes of Los Angeles County. There’s a lot of land, 4,000 square miles worth, to get to know.  I’ve always been impressed—and occasionally even overwhelmed—that we L.A. County hikers can choose a path to explore from among a dozen sets of hills and ranges of mountains. Pathways lead through more than a hundred intriguing canyons and arroyos, through state parkland, national parkland, a large national forest and dozens and dozens of parks, preserves and special places.

Its many parklands and thousands of miles of trail would make L.A. County a hiker’s paradise were it not for one major fact: ten million people live in the county. The population of metro L.A. alone is nearly four million. Add in the populations of a hundred or so incorporated and unincorporated cities spread across the basin and from the desert to the sea. Thus, the urban-suburban-exurban population has a paucity of parks and pathways per person.  What would be a rich diversity of parkland and open space for a metropolis of two million is an often crowded, green space-challenged environment for ten million

Nevertheless, solitude is much easier to find that you might imagine and L.A. County’s green spaces and tranquil places are closer than you think. Here’s a sampling:

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MOUNTAINS

The Verdugo Mountains bound the L.A. Basin on the southwest. Trending northwest to southeast. The mountains separate the San Fernando Valley on the western margin from La Crescenta Valley to the north and the San Gabriel Valley to the east.  A sister range—the San Rafael Hills—bound the basin on the southwest.

Because the crest of the range is so steep, the upper parts of the Verdugos (topping out at 3,077-foot Verdugo Peak) have been isolated from human impact. The crest of the range and a dozen of its upper canyons offer fine hiking with terrific metropolitan views.

What you see when you look up at the Santa Susana Mountains depends on where you stand. North-facing slopes are covered with coast live oak woodland and grassland, and even some big-cone Douglas fir while the south-facing slopes present panoramas of coastal sage scrub and grassland. The upper ramparts of the range have an unusually rich population of the valley oak. One of many great places to hike in the range is O’Melveny Park, second-largest city of Los Angeles park.

The San Gabriel Mountains are the only major mountain range in California that is considered a Transverse Range; that is, extending east-west across the state. The San Gabriels are divided lengthwise into a steeper southern front range and a taller northern range by a series of east-west trending canyons. For more than a century, the front range of the San Gabriels has delighted Southland residents seeking quiet retreats and easy-to-access tranquil trails. The mountain high country, crowned by 10,064-foot Mt. Baldy, towers over the City of the Angels and offers the hiker the most challenging trails in the range, much of which is included within the Angeles National Forest.

“The slopes are exceptionally steep and insecure to the foot and they are covered by thorny bushes from five to ten feet high,” was how the great naturalist John Muir described the chaparral, the dominant plant community of the mountains. Higher elevations have a wealth of taller trees: oaks, pines, incense cedar and spruce.

Other front range attractions are arroyos. These boulder-strewn washes may seem lifeless on the bottomland; however, a hiker following an arroyo’s course upward may soon find lush creekside flora,  including ferns and wildflowers, shaded by sycamore, alder and antiquarian oaks.

It is in the San Gabriel Mountains where Great Hiking Era I was born, and it is here where Great Hiking Era II is in full swing with the Angeles National Forest having the distinction of being one of the most heavily hiked national forests in America.

The Santa Monica Mountains are the only relatively undeveloped mountain range in the U.S. that bisects a major metropolitan area. They extend from Griffith Park in the heart of Los Angeles to Point Mugu, fifty miles away. The range is twelve miles wide at its broadest point and reaches an elevation of a little over 3,000 feet.

One of the few east-west trending ranges in the country, the Santa Monica Mountains can cause a little geographic confusion to the first-time visitor. The Santa Monica Bay and Malibu coastline also extend east-west alongside the mountains so that the mountain explorer actually looks south to view the ocean and heads west when heading “up the coast.”

The mountains are a Mediterranean ecosystem, the only one in the country under National Park Service protection. Large stretches are open and natural, covered with chaparral and oak trees., bright in spring with wildflowers. Oak woodland and fern glens shade gentle seasonal creeks.

The famed Hollywood Hills are the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains and share a similar ecology to the range’s taller and wilder peaks to the west. The differences between the two ends of the range have more to do with human settlement than natural history; the Hollywood Hills are by far the most developed part of the mountains. The hills separate the San Fernando Valley from Hollywood, Beverly Hills and parts of Los Angeles. They present a dramatic picture from afar, not because of their height which varies from 800 to 1,600 feet, but because the steep canyons of the hills make them look particularly rugged.

The Hollywood Hills comprise the wild side of Griffith Park and include the park’s famed high point, Mt. Hollywood. That famed international symbol of Tinseltown, the Hollywood sign, is perched atop Mt. Lee,

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VALLEYS

The densely populated San Fernando Valley is rectangular in shape, measuring twenty-four miles east to west and about twelve miles north to south. The valley holds restored stretches of the Los Angeles River and some botanical preserves. To really get a feel for the Valley, you need to take a look at the surrounding mountains that wall off the Valley from the rest of the county. It’s in the mountains surrounding the Valley—the Santa Monica Mountains, San Gabriel Mountains, Simi Hills and Verdugo Mountains—where hikers discover the best traces of the natural and human history of the region.

The San Gabriel Valley may not seem very valley-like to the commuter speeding along the Foothill Freeway; however, the valley, as a geographic entity, is apparent to the hiker standing on high.  The San Gabriel Mountains border the valley on its northern edge, Puente Hills on the south and southeast, the San Rafael Hills on the west.  Extending along the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, from Pasadena to Glendora, this former orange-growing empire is now thoroughly suburbanized. The nature that remains is preserved in canyons, along waterways and in some hillside retreats.

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COAST

While millions flock to the sand strands of the county beaches, few realize that at the right time and in the right place there’s some great beach hiking to be found along the county’s seventy-five miles of shoreline. Rocky Palos Verdes Peninsula’s fifteen miles of reefs, tide pools, coves and crescent beaches will surprise those energetic enough to hike them. The hills of PV anchor the south end of crescent-shaped Santa Monica Beach, a series of wide sandy beaches extending thirty miles from Redondo Beach to Malibu.

The northern part of the county’s coastline, beginning about Malibu, is decidedly different from the south. The Santa Monica Mountains veer toward the coast, creating a series of bluffs, rocky points, coves, and sandy beaches. Zuma Beach is one of the county’s largest sand beaches, and one of the finest sand strands in California. Above the beach soars Pt. Dume, a good place to watch for migrating California gray whales.

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URBAN-SUBURBAN EDGE 

Some of the county’s parklands and most intriguing trails are neither wholly urban nor wholly wild. Hiking along the edge of the metropolis has always fascinated me, always beckoned me to explore: the edges hidden from view, the edges between the populous valleys and the lonesome mountains, the edge between the shore and sundown sea.

By edges I mean the rag-tag remnants of the natural world that surround the metropolis. Edges are places that don’t quite fit; they are anomalies of the metropolitan life. Ecologists say many of the most interesting and dynamic habitats are on the edges: places where the forest meets a meadow, where the land meets the sea, where the city meets the country. When the true wilderness is out of reach, try hiking the borderland between the built and natural worlds. You might be very surprised at what you find.

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