Today we hiked the entire length of Griffith Park from Travel Town (north) to Fern Dell (south) and back. The nice thing about living so close to the park is we get to sleep in since we don’t need to travel very far to start hiking. We didn’t get on the trail until about 8 am. We started up Oak Canyon which is a popular equestrian trail. It’s very pretty and like the trail’s name, it’s a canyon covered in beautiful oak trees. The morning was chilly and there was frost on the ground. From Oak Canyon we connected with the Toyon Trail. This trail was very lush and green. I almost felt like I was walking along a country road. We then connected to Mt. Hollywood Drive. It’s a winding concrete road, but it was very quiet and we saw very few people. To my surprise, we happened to come upon the infamous haunted picnic table, table #29. If you don’t know the legend of the picnic table, two young lovers, Nancy and Rand, were crushed to death by a tree that fell right on top of them while they were making love on Halloween night in 1978. The fallen tree still remains on top of the table as is because when the city sent someone to cut it down, he became scared out of his wits and claims he saw the tree start to shake violently and heard voices telling him, “Leave us alone!”. When his supervisor went up to do the job himself, he was found dead of a heart attack the next morning. Quite an interesting little story. From Mt. Hollywood Drive, we made our way up near the Griffith Park Observatory. The trail became very busy here with tourists and people hiking in from the south side of the park. We then descended down the West Trail into Fern Dell. Fern Dell was very pretty with it’s cascading pools of water and tropical flora, but we didn’t stay very long. There were A LOT of people here and although I was expecting it to be this way, we were done with crowds and ready to head back to the peace and quiet on the north side of the park. We hiked back on the West Trail and then took the Charlie Turner Trail up and around Mt. Hollywood. From there we headed north around Taco Peak and then followed the trail West. From here we picked up the North Trail near Mt. Chapel and then back again to Mt. Hollywood Drive, Toyon Trail and eventually Oak Canyon. It was a fun day, but as fun as the past few weeks have been trying out city hiking, I think I am ready to get back into the wilderness!
I was super excited to explore a new part of the Angeles National Forest this past Sunday! One of the first hiking books I’d ever purchased was “Trails of the Angeles” by the late John W. Robinson. This hike is hike #1 in his book. In addition, Casey Schreiner of ModernHiker.com, recently posted a trail report about this hike, making it sound even more appealing.
The trailhead is about an hour and 20 minute drive from our home and is in the northwestern section of the Angeles NF. It starts off on the PCT, and we did pass a number of thru hikers headed to the Sierras as we ascended the mountain southbound.
The first part of the trail took us up switchbacks that were surrounded by blooming ceanothus (wild lilac) as well as patches of yerba santa. As we made our way up, we had wonderful views of the Antelope Valley, the Ventura mountain ranges, the San Andres rift zone and the Tehachapis. It’s a very interesting contrast considering the mountain we were hiking on was so lush and green.
As we continued, we passed through an incredibly beautiful pine grove filled with purple lupines. Various wildflowers were numerous along the entire route. As we climbed upward, Liebre mountain turned into a sprawling oak savanna and the clouds began to roll over us as they made their way across the mountaintop. We reached a junction where the PCT headed east, but continued along the trail (which was now more of a fire road then a single track) to reach the highest point of Liebre Mountain. To find the high point which is marked with a wooden stake and a pile of large rocks, we had to leave the road and do a little searching. We stopped here to relax, have a snack and enjoy the scenery. We also did a some exploring around the top of the mountain before making our way back taking our time as we did. As we descended, the temperatures had warmed up a bit and there was more wildlife activity; lizards warming themselves in the sun and insects enjoying the wildflower blooms. I stopped for a while to get some photos of a Clearwing Hummingbird Moth nectaring on the yerba santa at about 4,300’. It was quite a sight! I’d never seen one of these before! This was a lovely hike and another great day to be in the mountains!
