Readers Wonder “When Will Temescal Trails Reopen?

Hiking trails around Pacific Palisades were damaged after the Palisades Fires.

Several readers have reached out to find a date when the Temescal Gateway Park Hiking Trails on land overseen by the State’s  Mountain Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) will reopen after the January 2025 fires that occurred a year ago..

The hiking trail to the waterfall was an easy, but popular hike that started in the park off Sunset Boulevard and looped back to the park.

One reader contacted MRCA yesterday and wrote “Any idea who I can contact to inquire about Temescal Canyon Park and when it will reopen? Thank you.”

The reader received a response that they had reached MRCA, but “Unfortunately, we do not have an estimated reopening time frame to reopen the park. Crews are working to get gas and water running again.”

Another reader wrote:  “I have no info on this other than I bushwhacked down to the waterfall from the Bienveneda trail past the blockades some months ago. It was full of slides, and in very bad shape, although the trail on the other side that leads back down to the park center looked good from where I was and looking down from above at glimpses of it.

The reader continued, “I’ve been attending meetings of an off branch of the Sierra Club called Santa Monica Mountains Task Force. They are a group of volunteers who clear trails. To my knowledge they have yet to clear trails at Temescal. Since it was a major staging area I believe it’s taking a long time to clear out and clean up.

“I hiked Will Roger’s at its opening, and a ranger told me that the trail to the Backbone is closed indefinitely, and that the bridge at Chicken Ridge may never be rebuilt. Not sure why. Hoping that’s not true.”

In a January 2025 story “Restoring Our Trails, The Next Steps” in the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter, the reporter noted that all Rustic Canyon bridges burned and that the bridge on Temescal Canyon Trail by the waterfall was gone. The reporter wrote “In an uplifting email exchange I had with long-time Sierra Club crew member Noel Bell, he recalled the previous time the bridge here burned (and being part of the volunteer crew who installed the replacement).”

The story also praised the late Palisadian Ron Webster, who with volunteers built 28 of the hiking trails in the Santa Monica Mountains. All burned in the Palisades Fire.

The story noted that Jason Finlay, the trails coordinator for California State Parks Angeles District said, “I’m really thankful for Ron Webster right now, and the “lightly on the land” ethos, because we don’t have a lot of [man-made] structures in these areas. That’s one of the big positives I’ve been taking away. These trails are laid out with minimal structure, and it’s really going to be a lot easier to repair because of that.”

https://www.sierraclub.org/angeles/blog/2025/01/restoring-our-trails-next-steps#:~:text=We%20lost%20the%20Chicken%20Ridge,reconstruction%20effort%20for%20State%20Parks.

(Editor’s note: hearing Ron Webster’s name brought back memories of the day that I accompanied Ron and fellow naturalist Jim Kenny up the Los Leones trail in August 2015. It was an entertaining and enjoyable morning. Webster passed away January 7, 2021, at the age of 86, and Kenney on November 9, 2023, at the age of 88. The story was written after our hike.)

Local Mountains Trails Deteriorate

By SUE PASCOE

Editor

Over the past few years, local hiking trails have become too crowded on weekends for repair work, so volunteer crews have switched to weekdays.

When members of the Sierra Club, led by trail maker Ron Webster, arrived at Los Leones early Friday morning on July 3, the parking lot was full and cars extended down the street to Sunset Boulevard. The low estimate was 400 people hiking, the high 1,000.

“The trails are not built for these crowds,” said Jim Kenney, a former dentist, and now a photographer who until a few years ago was a member of the trail-repair crew.

“Hundreds and hundreds of people are passing each other and the trail has deteriorated,” said Webster, 81, who has won awards from the Sierra Club (in 1974, 1978 and 2012) for his trail work.

“Many years ago, Milt McAuley’s ‘Hiking Trails of the Santa Monica Mountains’ (1980) was so much in demand that it went all the way to a sixth edition,” Kenney said. “Still, it reached a relatively small number of interested hikers who bought the book.”

California State Parks Trails coordinator Dale Skinner was asked about Webster’s and Kenney’s concerns.

“Unfortunately, many of these trailheads that have become popular were not designed to handle the sheer volume of traffic they are getting,” Skinner said. “When we first developed Los Leones, we would be lucky to see a few cars on a weekday and maybe 50 cars on the average weekend. Today the visitation is big.

“We recently completed a survey and compared the numbers to a survey done in 2005,” he said. “The results have shown us a large increase in traffic.”

Stephen Bylin, Topanga Sector Superintendent for State Parks added, “Use of trail(s) has been very high for years because Topanga State Park is so accessible to greater Los Angeles urban population.”

Bylin recalled how in the mid-90s, he placed trail counters on Los Leones and Temescal trails. At that time, Temescal commonly saw more than 1,000 hikers on weekends and the Los Leones trail was commonly well into the hundreds.

“The Los Leones trailhead has gone from a tertiary trailhead to a primary trailhead. In some places trailheads that were never on the radar have become very popular in just a few years,” Skinner said. “This is due to social media for the most part.”

A simple Google search reveals “A 7.3-mile hike from Pacific Palisades to a popular overlook in Topanga State Park. The first part of this hike – the Los Leones Trail – is one of the lushest riparian canyons I’ve seen in the Santa Monica Mountains.”

And yet another site proclaims: “The Los Leones Trail starts on Los Leones Drive in the Pacific Palisades at a clearly marked gate. This is a popular trail, but there’s plenty of free street parking, as well as two spillover lots near picnic areas and restrooms.”

“The Ring brothers were going to develop Los Leones, building condominiums on the land,” Kenney said. He became involved because after a fire had gone through the area in 1973, the following year the wildflowers were abundant and a photographer’s dream.

“Winston Salser had the idea that if people could see how beautiful this area was, everyone would want to save it,” said Webster, who made the Los Leones trail two-and-half to three-and-half feet wide next to the side of the mountain. “With these crowds the trails should be wider, maybe three-and-half to four feet wide.”

He pointed to the outer edge of the trail, which was crumbling. “The traffic has eroded the edge of the slope,” Webster said. “Boards with pins will need to be installed to support the slope.”

He noted out how the continued packing of ground has exposed tree roots now directly in the middle of the path. “The roots will need to be dug out to prevent someone from tripping.”

“Brush on the mountainside needs to be cleared back, so people can stay on the trail, rather than moving cliffside,” said Webster, noting that another location needed steps.

In order to perform typical maintenance, the trail needs to be empty, allowing volunteers, many of whom are in their 70s and 80s, to work (equipment is carried to the site).

When Bylin was asked if a trail could be closed a day for maintenance, he said, “No.”

Skinner explained closing a trail is hard because there is no effective way to let everyone know it will be closed.

“The average hiker will gladly hike through a crew doing work but will often ignore closed signs or be upset that the trail they want to hike is closed,” Skinner said. “We ran into this problem at Point Mugu where we clearly posted the trail closure weeks ahead of time and people were still trying to hike.”

Skinner praised the Sierra Club’s Santa Monica Mountains Task Force, Ron Webster and his crew. “They have worked hard at keeping the trails at the east end of the mountains open. We at State Parks are grateful for the incredible amount of work they do every year.”

According to Skinner, there are plans to improve the trail at Los Leones to be more able to handle higher volumes of traffic, and will include retaining walls and maybe steps in some locations.

There is no timeline on completion because, “Unfortunately, this is one trail in a vast network of trails extending from Will Rogers State Park to Point Mugu State Park.”