Roam-O-Rama
Summit Valley, a.k.a. Edmund D. Edelman Park (named in honor of a Los Angeles County supervisor), is a recent addition to the public lands of the Santa Monica Mountains. The park spreads across both sides …
In the cool of a spring evening, as the sun arcs toward the western horizon at an ever-later hour (especially after daylight time kicks in on April 7), you can escape from the cares of …
Native California fan palms (Washingtonia filifera), familiar to Anza-Borrego and Baja visitors, can be found as well in scattered locations amid the rocky defiles of Joshua Tree National Park, which lies some 100 miles north …
On a bud-bursting spring day, Harper Creek's shallow, jewel-like pools invite tactile exploration — with more than just the fingers. Slide into one of the pools this month (assuming we get a decent amount of …
Scenic Red Rock Canyon hides amid the scruffy slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains, not far from the San Fernando Valley communities of Woodland Hills and Calabasas. Slabs of cavernous sandstone and cobbly conglomerate tilted …
Hidden in the apex of a valley just below Sunrise Highway, near the town of Pine Valley, a small stream has worn its way down to the metamorphic bedrock that underlies much of the Laguna …
Although they slice only about six miles inland from the Pacific shoreline near Point Dume in Malibu, Zuma Canyon and its tributaries harbor some of the deeper gorges of the Santa Monica Mountains. Winter rains …
San Diego County's "big" Black Mountain (not the smaller one looming above Rancho Peñasquitos) rises gently to an elevation of 4051 feet outside Ramona. A fire-lookout tower once stood on Black Mountain's summit, taking full …
Orange County's Thomas F. Riley Wilderness Park -- a wilderness in name only -- spreads over 475 acres of rolling hills and oak-lined ravines and includes about five miles of trails open to hikers, equestrians, …
The 750 acres of open space at Escondido's Elfin Forest Recreational Reserve were opened to the public in December 1992 as a cooperative effort between the Olivenhain Municipal Water District and the U.S. Bureau of …
Created by uplift of the sea floor roughly two million years ago, the Palos Verdes peninsula lay surrounded by the ocean for hundreds of thousands of years. Today a vast sheet of alluvium fills the …
Like a ship caught fast on a sandbar, the Verdugo Mountains protrude above what would otherwise be an unbroken sheet of alluvial deposits slanting down from the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains toward the …
The Scripps Coastal Reserve, managed by the University of California Natural Reserve System, includes a small, undeveloped mesa overlooking the ocean, steep canyons to either side, and an underwater preserve beneath Scripps Pier. Up on …
Gilman Peak's bald summit, barely poking over the lesser ridges of the Chino Hills of Orange and Riverside Counties, affords a breathtakingly spacious view of Southern California on a clear day. To the southwest lies …
Thousands of years of cutting and polishing by flash floods and winds have produced the intricate rock formations and slot-like ravines you'll discover at the foot of the Santa Rosa Mountains in far-eastern San Diego …
Park-like Henninger Flats is a cool "sky island" in the front range of the San Gabriel Mountains, just behind and above the cities of Pasadena and Altadena. The flats and slopes hereabouts have been the …