Pages Tagged “Hiking”

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Reviews

• Astra Lumina ★★★★★ Nighttime walk through botanical gardens and a series of immersive light-and-music shows that you can take at your own pace. Definitely worth it!
• Entradero Park Loop ★★★★☆ Relaxing walk through scrub habitat around a basin with restored wetlands. Not much shade, good for spotting birds.
• Forrestal Reserve ★★★★☆ Coastal hillsides, landslides ancient and modern, and an abandoned quarry. (Let’s call it a geologically interesting area!) Trails range from nearly flat to infuriatingly steep. Lots of chapparal, not much shade.
• George F Canyon ★★★★★ A quiet hike along a seasonal streambed. Shady for the first part, then opens up. Beware of poison oak. City view at the summit. Birds, rabbits, butterflies.
• Hopkins Wilderness Park ★★★★☆ A good place to bring your kids or just take a shady walk in something that feels like nature. Lightly wooded, some hills, trails, a stream and a duck pond, plus picnic areas and camping.
• Linden H. Chandler Preserve ★★★☆☆ Hilly, with not much shade except in the lightly wooded areas along the intermittent streambeds. Higher areas have clear views of the LA Basin and the golf course next door.
• Madrona Marsh Preserve ★★★★★ One of my favorite places to walk in the South Bay, the preserve is the last remnant of seasonal marshes that once covered the western part of the LA basin.
• Malaga Canyon Reserve Gorgeous views from the trailhead that I found (which was closed). I need to see if the other trailheads are open.
• Point Vicente ★★★★★ Easy trails run through scrub brush along the tops of the coastal bluffs, the lighthouse almost always in view. Shade only in the picnic shelters, but plenty of ocean breezes. On a clear day you can see from Catalina Island to Malibu.
• Prickly Pear Trail ★★★★☆ Short loop with some steep sections. Lots of cactus. (Keep your balance!) Nice views of the ocean and Point Vicente Lighthouse.
• South Coast Botanic Garden ★★★★★ Big enough to feel like you could get lost (but not big enough to get lost), packed with trails that feel like walking through nature, surrounded by more structured gardens. Great for events, families or just getting out for a walk.
• Toulon Drive Loop ★★★☆☆ The easy part runs along a stream bed. Then it gets steeper and a lot less shaded as it wraps around a chaparral-covered hill.
• Valmonte Trail and Frog Creek Loop ★★★★★ A nice, easy loop trail. Hilly, with plenty of shade in the wooded areas along the stream beds. Lots of side trails.
• White Point Nature Preserve ★★★★☆ Mostly flat, with hills along the inland edge. Views of the ocean and Catalina. Not much shade except for one stand of trees at the foot of the hills, the garden around the visitor center, and the bunkers remaining from a military site decommissioned in the 1970s.

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Blog Posts

• Our Trail is Better With Our Free Ap!

  Found a place to hike this morning that was only in the 80s instead of hotter, and was greeted by this sign at the trailhead.

  (Aug 2023)
• Covid Garden

  Finally made it out to the botanical gardens up in the hills for a hike. They’ve actually stayed open this whole time by requiring reservations to limit the number of people on the grounds at a time. (Also face masks, distancing, and closing off benches and some sections.) Ironically there were more people there than […]

  (May 2020)
• Bike Path Closed on Account of Virus

  This bike path was closed in response to too many people going outdoors to the same places, creating the crowds that the closures of bars, restaurants and retail stores were trying to avoid in an effort to slow the virus spread. I’m kind of surprised at this one. Unlike the paths near the beach, it […]

  (Mar 2020)
• The Shrinking Outdoors

  Last weekend, a lot of people in the Los Angeles area tried to go hiking, or to the beach, or otherwise outdoors…to the same places. Which ended up creating the crowds that the shutdown was supposed to prevent, just in different places. 🤦‍♂️ So over the last few days, various cities, counties and the state […]

  (Mar 2020)
• iNaturalist is like Pokemon Go for real animals

  I’ve joked about how iNaturalist is like Pokemon Go for real animals. Well, since I started playing the game, I’ve been combining walks for both. And on yesterday’s hike in the local botanical gardens, I took some photos with a few Pokemon in their, um, natural habitats? (Still not sure why I found so many […]

  (Aug 2019)
• Seasons of Madrona Marsh

  I went back to the Madrona Marsh Preserve for the third time this year, and combined a Spring/Summer/Fall photo of one of the seasonal pools.

  (Oct 2015)
• Seasonal Wetlands: Before and After the Summer

  Before-and-after view of the seasonal pools at Madrona Marsh, full of water in spring and grasslands in summer.

  (Sep 2015)
• Back to the Marsh (what’s left of it)

  I returned to Madrona Marsh at the end of summer to see how much it had dried out since hiking there last spring.

  (Sep 2015)
• Constructed Wilderness: A Tale of Two Parks

  Madrona Marsh Preserve and Hopkins Wilderness Park take opposite approaches to being islands of nature in the middle of the city.

  (May 2015)
• Beware Mountain Lion (Peters Canyon Hike)

  A couple of weeks ago I just had to get out of the house for an afternoon and found myself at the entrance to Peters Canyon Park. The last time I’d been there, the park was closed due to recent rains. This time, it was open. Several trails run from the entrance around the edge […]

  (Feb 2011)

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