Places to hike and camp in Southern California?

M

msiley

Joined
Aug 19, 2006
Messages
542
I recently moved to LA coming from Northern Ohio and was wondering
if anyone had some good locations for hiking and camping
in the area?

I found some hiking trails in Mugu State Park but that place
is overpopulated. I passed about 40 people within an hour on one trail.

I'm looking for more remote locations that are unpopulated
where I can hike in, camp and hike out and hopefully see
more bears (joking but you know what I mean) then people.

I'm having trouble finding quality information if anyone
could help me out it would be much appreciated.
 
Backpackinglight.com has a lot of forum participants in SoCal.

http://socal.hiking.info/sc_links.html has a whole page of links to SoCal hiking spots.

There's great hiking in Anaheim too :D

DisneylandParkThumb.jpg
 
Where in LA do you live? I'm from there and I used to go hiking and camping all the time. Mugu or anywhere near the coast will always be crowded. You never really find solitude in the LA area but there are some places that are not so crowded. You can go up to Angeles Crest where there's many places to hike/camp. You can also go up to Mt. Baldy and try for the summit. There's a few places to hike/camp in the Mt. Baldy area. I have a book called "Trails of the Angeles" that covers 100 hikes in the San Gabriel mountains.
 
come up to B.C. We got as much wilderness as you could want. (I love making other people jealous:D)
 
L.A. is surrounded by mountains. Get off the maintained trails, and you'll never see anyone out there.
 
If you go out during a week day instead of the weekend, you'll be much more alone.

You should be aware that If you get off the trail in most of SoCal's mountain, you will be alone in wilderness. Fall off a trail, and if no one actually saw you go over, and you got injured (very likely) your bones may be there a long time. SoCal mountains can be very unforgiving, especially to folks from the Midwest, who aren't familiar with mountains to begin with, and who can't believe that this close to a major world city, they can be utterly alone.
 
Check out the Sespe Wilderness in the Los Padres forrest. The Sespe River is the last wild river in southern california. Good dayhiking and backpacking all throughout the area. A little toasted by wildfires, but still cool.
 
You do need to watch out for the dangerous wildlife on the ocean beaches there-- they can crawl up and bite your....kneecap

16280f.jpg
 
The Wilerness Way guys are always hanging out up the arroyo seco in Altadena. Beautiful country up that way. Of course, any wilderness area is better than the city

Alan
 
I grew up in Pasadena and would just head north into the San Gabriel Mountains and the Angeles National Forest. From Brentwood you would just take the 405 Freeway north, switch to I-5 north, then 14 North. When you reach the desert take a hard right and head back into the mountains on Angeles Forest Highway.

A better place to try might be Los Padres, such as Sespe mentioned earlier http://www.lpfw.org/about/aboutforest.htm.
 
A couple of places I like to go are San Gorgonio and San Jacinto. SG is less traveled but SJ is not bad either in that you can take the tram up and once you get about 2 miles away from the tram, much less people.

SGWA.org
 
As a former Angeleno, I can recommend highly the various trails off the Angeles Crest Highway. Just head north out of La Canada, and keep your eye out for trailheads. Very beautiful country that I remember very fondly. I've seen bobcat, stags with huge racks, and found the tracks of mountain lions more than once. Hard to believe that you're just minutes away from downtown L.A.

Look up Christopher Nyerges and his School of Self Reliance in Eagle Rock. The man knows the woods like his right hand.
 
Well as someone that lives in LA my self.. All i can say is get used to see alot of people no matter where you go. You can stay away from people if you go on harder trails as most people like easy hikes. Angeles national forest is a great place to go. Make sure you get a parking permit before you park the car in most places. There are some very nice places to hike off the PCH past malibu. Just remember most of the hiking is up or down very little flat trails. All the sites that were posted are very good. I used them once in a while.

Sasha
 
I am in LA county and go to some real cool places kind of obscure but goo for backpacking and hiking. I am getting ready for another Grand Canyon and Mt. Whitney hike. Anyone wanting to hike or work on survival skills contact me.
bearthedog76@hotmail.com
 
Any knuts around San Diego? Any recommendations for trails or possibly a meet?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top