Roam
Twisted live oaks and sycamores and pungent bay laurel trees highlight the brief trek up the L.A. coast's most easily accessible waterfall-bearing canyon. The goal is an 18-foot cascade tucked into an upper branch of …
Dotted with weather-beaten pinyon pines, Villager Peak in the southern Santa Rosa Mountains rises nearly a mile above the lowlands of Anza-Borrego Desert. Serious "peak baggers" from around the state are drawn to its summit …
The mile-long El Modena Open Space in the city of Orange preserves a steep-sided, miniature mountain range, clothed in a tough mixture of drought-resistant cactus and sage-scrub vegetation. Underfoot, you'll find colorful andesite and pyroclastic …
Little remains of the century-old, redwood-planked flume (aqueduct) that once brought the waters of the Cuyamaca Mountains to Grossmont Summit and farther west. Much of the flume's 36-mile-long grade is hard to identify, since no …
Good timing is the key to catching the waterfall in Black Star Canyon at its best. Since only about three square miles of drainage area lie above it, persistent rains are needed to get more …
San Dieguito River Park's San Pasqual/Clevenger Canyon trail system takes hikers to heights overlooking inland North County.
Sheltered in a cool, shady canyon a few short minutes from the 'burbs of Altadena and Pasadena, Millard Falls comes alive at about this time of year with runoff from the "front range" of the …
Elephant trees (Bursera microphylla), once considered exceedingly rare in California, have turned out -- after decades of searching and serendipitous discovery -- to be not so rare north of the international border. Still, the scattered …
Orange County's 50,000-acre Irvine Ranch Land Reserve -- essentially a big olive branch extended to the County of Orange by the Irvine Company in exchange for development rights in that county's remaining open spaces -- …
Along the canyon walls of Anza-Borrego's Arroyo Tapiado ("Mudwall Wash"), weathering and erosion acting on friable sedimentary rock have produced a strange kind of topography known by some geologists as pseudokarst. Like karst topography, which …
The rustic East County communities of Harbison Canyon and Crest are separated by only a mile of horizontal distance. Harbison Canyon shelters amid oak woods in a deep-cleft hollow, while Crest, some 700 feet higher …
On many a late fall and winter morning, a damp, opaque layer of air a few hundred feet deep lies over the low-lying Southern California coast. By 9 or 10 in the morning, the sun …
The 1574-acre Mount Gower Open Space Preserve was hard-hit by the Cedar Fire of October 2003. Today, after the extraordinarily wet 2004-05 rainfall year and after a first wave of precipitation in the current rainy …
All along Orange County's north coastal region (Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach), formerly environmentally abused wetlands and floodplains are in the process of being restored to some semblance of an original condition. Talbert Nature …
On a clear late autumn or winter day atop Corte Madera Mountain, you can see forever -- or at least as far as Santa Catalina and San Clemente islands to the west, and the mile-high …
From the top of Mount Lukens, the high point in elevation within the city limit of Los Angeles, you can peer over a vast and spacious urban plain -- coastal haze and smog permitting. During …