Fish Creek Wash is the gateway to a fascinating labyrinth of rugged canyons, twisted arroyos, and mud hills covering the stark and desiccated Carrizo Badlands in a remote corner of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Why …

Big Sycamore Canyon in coastal Ventura County’s Point Mugu State Park is famous for its miles-long promenade of magnificent California sycamore trees. Higher up and farther inland, hidden in that same drainage, you can find …

The easy-going, mostly descending (450 feet of elevation gain/1200 feet of elevation loss), east-to-west, one-way walk or mountain-bike ride on the Santa Ysabel Truck Trail near Ramona is fine for a cool day in February, …

Yesteryear, Old Camp was a popular rendezvous point for hunting parties using the historic Joplin Trail between the flatlands of Orange County’s Trabuco Canyon and Old Saddleback (the crest of the Santa Ana Mountains). Today, …

The late-winter midday sun gently simmers the lowest elevations of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, yet it more coolly illuminates the 4000-foot plateau of Pinyon Mountain Valley, lying high in the park’s central mountain range — …

The viewful Hummingbird Trail starts at the extreme northeast corner of Simi Valley (both the valley and the city of same name) and deviously ascends boulder-studded slopes to the crest of a long ridge leading …

The Bayside Trail, sweeping downward from the old lighthouse at Cabrillo National Monument on Point Loma, offers an incomparable view of the city of San Diego and its watery environs. Amid the sweet-pungent sage scrub …

The winter season in San Diego County is accompanied by fairly frequent instances of unusual optical effects in the sky. Many are associated with high clouds consisting of microscopic, hexagonal ice crystals which bend or …

Skiing in San Diego County’s mountains? Fact or fiction? The answer in any given winter season varies, but it is typically “fact” for one or two brief periods of time per year. The type of …

The rambling Puente Hills, overlooking the San Gabriel Valley to the north and Orange County to the south, interrupt what would otherwise be a continuous spread of flat, nondescript suburbs. Rising no higher than 1500 …

Millennia of geological weathering and erosion have cut and polished the landscape into the striking forms you’ll discover while visiting Anza-Borrego’s Calcite Mine area. A highlight of the hike is the mine itself. During World …

Diminutive Rocky Oaks Park is typical of the many small properties that have been purchased or earmarked for future acquisition by the National Park Service in the continuing effort to flesh out the Santa Monica …

Incremental improvements over the past couple of years in Balboa Park’s hidden corners are resulting in the park’s rebirth. Canyon slopes formerly choked with dense undergrowth and used as de-facto drug dens have been cleared …

Blue Angels Peak is the name of a prominent crag practically sitting on the border between California and Baja California, just east of the high-desert community of Jacumba. In fact, the summit of Blue Angels …

Jones Peak is nowhere near the loftiest of the many named summits you can climb in the sharply rising “front range” of the San Gabriel Mountains. But its elevated position — barely one mile by …

Worthwhile primarily for the view, which can be wide-ranging and spectacular on the clearest late fall or winter days, the Rim Trail in Mission Trails Regional Park rambles along a sparsely vegetated ridgeline overlooking much …

Temescal Canyon and Will Rogers State Historic Park in Pacific Palisades are just two of the many units of parkland and open space that make up the sprawling Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The …

Spectacular exposures of colorfully banded and folded metamorphic rock gave “Rainbow Canyon” its so-far unofficial title. The canyon’s colorful nature is enhanced even further during a peak wildflower season, when the place looks like a …

With a drop-off-and-pick-up transportation arrangement, you can enjoy a challenging hiking traverse across the north end of the Verdugo Mountains, ascending through La Tuna Canyon Park on a rough foot trail and descending toward the …

In the 1970s, the once tiny and now thoroughly suburbanized community of Alpine displayed a sign along its main highway boasting “Best Climate in the USA by Government Report.” The town’s boosters eventually got what …

In 2003, a big parcel of land on the west rim of the San Fernando Valley — the private Ahmanson Ranch — was reborn as the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve. The new …

Few travelers on Interstate 8 in eastern San Diego County fail to be impressed by the enormous stacks of rounded boulders thrusting skyward over the high-desert landscape. On this hike, you’ll get up-close and familiar …

A rambling patch of newly acquired open space that goes by the long-winded name of Michael D. Antonovich Regional Park at Joughin Ranch spreads over a south-facing slope that culminates in a 3747-foot summit called …

The six-mile-long Big Laguna Trail, high in the Laguna Mountains, wends its scenic way over gently rolling hills and grassy dales, never dipping below 5400 feet of elevation nor rising to more than 5900 feet. …

Diminutive Corral Canyon Park is one of the newer parcels of open space to be added to the archipelago of public lands known as the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. A lazily looping hiking …

Surf, sand, and picturesque bluffs. Salty breezes and the ever-present licorice scent of wild fennel. The rhythmic bumping of your bike tires over the pavement of an old four-lane highway, abandoned save for the occasional …

A splendid sense of isolation pervades the upper reaches of Solstice Canyon — thanks to the preservation of thousands of acres of land that have been incorporated into the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. …

With two steep ravines spanned by quaint footbridges, scores of well-kept, historically significant homes, and mature landscaping, Banker’s Hill is a monument to the elegance of the past. The work of early-century architects Irving Gill, …

Rustic Canyon, now almost fully reverted to wilderness condition after nature’s one-two punches of fire and flood, was quite lively in the past. Pop-philosopher Will Rogers and his associates used it as a retreat back …

For a unique look at La Jolla — from the edge of the village’s commercial center to 811 feet of elevation — try this obscure walking or bicycling route. Cyclists beware: there are some tough …

Here’s a bicycle ride that’s practically a land-based equivalent of the harbor cruise covering north San Diego Bay. Over an out-and-back stretch of 16 miles, you’re seldom far from the water, and the ease of …

Pico Canyon cuts deeply into the rugged Santa Susana Mountains, a few miles south of the Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park. The canyon is considered to be the birthplace of the oil industry in …

Familiar to most people around Del Mar but unknown to many outsiders, the Torrey Pines State Reserve Extension conceals itself amid the coastal bluffs inland from Del Mar and just north of the main Torrey …

On the eastern extremity of the San Gabriel Mountains, seemingly far from L.A.’s smoggy blanket of air, lies the Big Pines Recreation Area, designated as an all-season recreational area within Angeles National Forest. During the …

The sinuously curving rural roads on the far (north) side of Fallbrook offer a significant challenge to bicycle riders. Thirty or 40 years ago, the brushy hills and wooded backcountry canyons between Fallbrook and Temecula …

Bounded by some 32 freeway lanes carrying a half million vehicles a day, and smack dab in San Diego County’s busiest commercial zone, the San Diego River greenway in Mission Valley offers a surprising bit …

The multiuse trails of Marshall Canyon Regional Park (for hikers, mountain bikers, and equestrians) thread through Marshall and Live Oak canyons in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The inner recesses of both canyons …

Serene Lake Wohlford lies near the headwaters of Escondido Creek, its mirroring surface reflecting the shaggy-with-chaparral, boulder-studded hillsides that confine it. As early as 1895, water impounded for the benefit of Escondido’s farms and households …

The easternmost Backbone Trail, part of a “hikers highway in the making” through the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, skims across spacious Topanga State Park above Santa Monica and executes a final swan dive …

Palomar Mountain has dodged a couple of bullets in recent years. Wildfires in 2003 and 2007 have threatened to seriously damage San Diego County’s foremost example of oak-coniferous woodland, but the forests of Palomar have …

Perched several hundred feet up on a rocky slope north of Escondido, Dixon Lake stores drinking water and serves as a recreational resource as well. The lake’s camping facilities, picnic grounds, playgrounds, boat rentals, hiking …

Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Park consists of over 4200 acres of shallow canyons, sandstone rock formations, narrow strips of oak and riparian woodland, and hillsides draped with aromatic sage-scrub vegetation. Subdivisions press against the …

The Laguna Mountain range, just east (and squarely in the “rain shadow”) of the nearby Cuyamaca Mountains, snags just enough moisture from passing Pacific storms to support a forest of scattered live oaks, black oaks, …

Thanks to the crusading efforts of Descanso cabinetmaker Duncan McFetridge (affectionately known by some as the “Robin Hood of Cleveland Forest”), certain privately owned lands in Cleveland National Forest near Descanso, formerly slated for housing …

Significant hiking feats can be accomplished in the “wilds” of Orange County, especially in the upper elevations of the Santa Ana Mountains, which define the county’s east border. A case in point is the 10-mile, …

Crickets sing and bullfrogs groan. A hawk alights upon a sycamore limb, then launches with outstretched wings to catch a puff of sea breeze moving up the canyon. A cottontail rabbit bounds across the trail, …

The cabin community in Big Santa Anita Canyon and along neighboring Winter Creek has been called “a rustic Xanadu, where groceries come by burro.” On foot is the only way in for the owners of …

Barker Valley perches squarely in one of the more remote corners of the Palomar mountain range, right alongside an upper branch of the San Luis Rey River. Although it is not categorized as a wilderness …

Sometimes the intimacy of a small, hidden waterfall is more aesthetically rewarding than the thunder of a famous one. Such is the case with Holy Jim Falls. Tucked into a short, steep canyon draining the …

In Black Canyon, water amply illustrates its mindless yet artistic ability to sculpt stone. Every once in a great while, a gush of sediment-laden storm runoff tears through the canyon bottom, carving and polishing the …