Valmonte Trail and Frog Creek Loop

(Palos Verdes Peninsula, CA)

★★★★★

A narrow trail winds down a grassy hillside toward a valley clustered with trees.

A nice, easy loop trail. Hilly, with plenty of shade in the wooded areas along the intermittent streams, but not much up on top of the ridge. Sandwiched between suburbs and a golf course. Great views of the hills and valleys, with occasional glimpses of the ocean. The top of the ridge looks like it had a fire sometime in the last few years, or else the trees up there are really dormant even as late as April.

An apparently dead tree standing alone on a green, grassy hill with blue sky behind it, looking like the Windows XP wallpaper with a little more complexity.The trails are clearly visible, but there are so many of them crossing the area that it can be hard to tell which one will get you back to where you started. And they connect with private trails and neighborhood trails, so it’s easy to find yourself away from the main loop without realizing it. That said, it’s also not super-huge, and with the hillsides to orient yourself, it would be difficult to actually get lost. The dirt is very sandy in the valleys, so you need to watch your step.

Suitable for kids, dogs, and mountain biking.

I went there this weekend and one of the streams was flowing. I heard a bunch of frogs, but as usual I couldn’t see any. There were families with kids playing in the stream, and several groups of hikers I ran into more than once as we took the same loop in opposite directions.

One hillside trail connecting the valley to the hilltop loop has been badly eroded and is too steep to walk. (Though judging by the footprints, people have been climbing it.) There’s a switchback nearby which has also been eroded, but not as much.

Lookup up a hillside with a sharply eroded gash leading up to a few trees. A shallow stream with muddy banks and several types of trees, most narrow, some fallen across it. Blue sky is visible beyond the palm fronts and leaves, and reflected in the stream, with dapples of sunlight breaking up the shade.

Overall I was reminded of the better parts of Linden H. Chandler Preserve across the hill (which I hiked a couple of weeks ago), Toulon Loop in Murrieta, and Peters Canyon in Tustin. I’d definitely like to come back again, check it out in different seasons, and follow some of the other public trails.

More photos on Flickr.

Getting There

AllTrails sent me to a trailhead right off of Palos Verdes Drive that doesn’t seem to exist anymore. I ended up heading a little ways down Paseo del Campo, where the trail crosses the road, and then looked for a spot by the side of the road that I could park without scraping the bottom of the car on the rather high curb.

More info at Valmonte Trail and Frog Creek Loop.

View on OpenStreetMap.