Roam-O-Rama
Now that San Diego County's historic megafires are extinguished, outdoor-oriented folks — and the just plain curious — are anxious to get out there and do some sightseeing. The full recovery of the natural landscape …
For half a year now, rainbows have been conspicuously absent from San Diego skies. This will surely change within a few weeks as we encounter the first of several winter storms spinning out of the …
The so-called Main Divide, or summit ridge, of the Santa Ana Mountains straddles the boundary between Orange and Riverside Counties, definitively separating the L.A./Orange County urban sprawl from inland communities such as Corona, Lake Elsinore, …
Poway's Iron Mountain thrusts its conical, chaparral-clad summit nearly 2700 feet above sea level, a height that is frequently well above the low-lying coastal haze. On many a crystalline winter day, the summit offers a …
Millions of years of tectonic uplift, weathering, and erosion created the maze of monzogranite boulders in the Wonderland of Rocks section of Joshua Tree National Park. Wherever you look in this region, your mind is …
The 5.5-mile Kelly Ditch Trail, completed in 1985, is perhaps the most beautiful pathway yet built in the Cuyamaca-Julian area. This hiking/horse trail is routed partly along a century-old diversion ditch. You'll also tread over …
An engineering marvel when built in the 1890s, the Mt. Lowe Railway above Pasadena and Altadena lived a checkered past full of both glory and destruction. Before its final abandonment in the mid-1930s, the line …
The striped skunk stood defiantly in the middle of the trail, its tail held straight up and its beady eyes tracking my every move. I slunk by, circumscribing a 180-degree arc of 10-yard radius -- …
At 3111 feet of elevation, Sandstone Peak lies at the very top of the Santa Monica Mountains. The view from the summit is panoramic, with distant mountain ranges, the hazy Los Angeles Basin, and the …
September temperatures remain warm on Mount Laguna, and both of the large national-forest campgrounds -- Laguna and Burnt Rancheria -- atop the 6000-foot mountain are winding down their busy summer season. During much of the …
Solstice Canyon Park, a unit of the sprawling Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, invites your attention, with superb oak woodland habitat to enjoy, and lessons in fire ecology to ponder. Since its unveiling in …
Rustic signs along some of Clairemont's major streets call attention to one of the oldest designated open-space parks in San Diego: the 900-acre Tecolote Canyon Natural Park. Using the park's network of service roads and …
On the eastern Angeles Crest, not far above the L.A. Basin's smoggy blanket of air, lies Big Pines Recreation Area -- a designated year-round recreation zone in Angeles National Forest. Blanketed by a heterogeneous mixture …
Work on the Trans County Trail ("Pines to Spines" Trail) between the pines of Torrey Pines State Reserve and the spines of the Anza-Borrego Desert continues. Some 70 percent of the trail's segments have been …
Sparkling and silvery like a freshly minted silver dollar, Dollar Lake lies cupped amid a talus-frosted natural bowl, not far below the highest summits of the San Bernardino Mountains. Snow lingers late on the steep …
Like a subterranean knife-wound, the Elsinore Fault slices across the heart of San Diego County's backcountry, promising an earth-shaking jolt or two during the next few centuries. Sputtering movements over geologic time along its opposing …