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!
There have been a number of rock slides in our local forests due to heavy rain and snow, so we decided to stick to lower ground and explore Upper Las Virgenes Open Space Preserve in Calabases. I’d see pictures of this place with its rolling hills, grassy meadows and majestic oak trees, but I never had the opportunity to visit and right now, it is so incredibly green! This area is a habitat for the San Fernando Valley Spineflower and the endangered Red-Legged Frog.
We started our hike at the Victory Trailhead. As soon as we left the parking area, I felt like I was in a movie set for “The Sound of Music” This place makes you feel so far away from LA, but it’s quite a different feel then the wilderness hikes we are so used to doing. We did an easy 5 miles on the Lasky Mesa Loop. It was a pleasant walk with just a little bit of up and down. We saw quite a few dogs on this trail too. I’m always happy to see people out hiking with their pups. It was a nice change of pace, and I was grateful to be able to see this location while it’s looking so vibrant. In the summer, the hills will lost their green radiance and turn to earthy brown.
Today we set out to hike from Mill Creek Summit on the Pacific Crest Trail and up to the Pacifico Mountain Campground. I knew this mountain was a north face, and I had a feeling we might encounter some icy patches on the trail, but we decided to give it a go. I knew there would be some snow up at the campground after the recent rain, and I wanted to take advantage of that since we never know what kind of winter we’ll have here in Southern California. We were about two miles into the hike and we started to come across patches of hard packed ice. We had microspikes to slip onto our boots for traction, but if we were to continue, coming down would be sketchy. Neither one of us wanted to risk spraining an ankle, so we decided to turn around and head back. Since it was still early in the day, we drove to Charlton Flats, had some lunch and then drove up to Waterman Mountain which I knew would be reliable for a nice snow hike. It was about 12:30 when we started on the trail and I expected to see many more people hiking, but it was actually very quiet. Most of the snow play folks stayed on the fire road or over at the Buckhorn day use area and there were very few people hiking up the Waterman Mountain trail. The few people we past were hiking with dogs in tow, or rather I should say they were in tow of their dogs. That’s the one thing I love about hiking… seeing all the happy dogs on the trail. As we got higher up, we seemed to be the only people on the trail. The sky was gray with overcast clouds and the mountain seemed still and peaceful. It was around 2:15 when we reached the Twin Peaks junction which is about 3/4 miles away from the Waterman Mountain summit. At this point we both decided it was time to head back to make sure we returned safely before the sun set and the temperatures dropped and turned the melting snow to ice. We both went home satisfied after spending another beautiful day in our Southern California mountains.
