Читать книгу 101 Hikes in Southern California. Exploring Mountains, Seashore, and Desert онлайн

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Toyon (California holly, the “holly” of Hollywood) is a common chaparral plant.

From Malibu east into L.A.’s west side, the Santa Monicas are steadily filling up with custom houses and subdivisions, all of which are in jeopardy from firestorms during the dry summer and fall seasons. Large and small wildfires will forever torment those who seek to establish permanent residence here.

Today the Santa Monicas are a patchwork quilt of private lands (many already built upon or slated for future development) and public lands, protected from urban development by inclusion within Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, a unit of the national park system.

Jeffrey pines in the Laguna Mountains

The San Gabriel Mountains

Turning our attention farther north and east, we find the San Gabriel Mountains, another segment of the east-west-trending Transverse Ranges. Behind the south ramparts of the San Gabriels, whose chaparraled slopes rise sheer from the Los Angeles Basin and the San Gabriel Valley, stands a series of high peaks, the tallest of which—Old Baldy, also known as Mt. San Antonio—exceeds 10,000 feet in elevation. Yawning gorges slash into the range, in one place offering more than a mile of vertical relief between canyon bottom and adjacent ridge.