A year after the L.A. fires, trail crews reflect on lessons learned
A year ago, we were all glued to our phones, namely the Watch Duty app, as we watched fires rip through beloved neighborhoods and landscapes. We braced ourselves for the death toll, the number of homes lost and what was harmed in our beloved mountains.
The Eaton and Palisades fires were the beginning of a crushing year for L.A.
I don’t believe in closure or want to push the idea of resilience, concepts too often forced in these kind of post-disaster narratives. But I do believe in pausing to discern what we have learned over the past year.
I recently spoke with trail crew volunteers, including two who lost their houses in the fires, to get their takes.
They each shared what’s helped them move through this past year, including what we can learn from the regrowth and recovery of our local forests. I left these conversations feeling inspired by both the natural and human spirit. I hope you will be too.
Lesson 1: Humans are adaptable like the trees and plants
After the devastating 2018 Woolsey fire, which burned much of the Santa Monica Mountains, photographer Jane Simpson made regular pilgrimages to Malibu Creek State Park to document the renewal process. She saw the hillsides start to green, and lupine and other flowers (and mustard) start to bloom.
It helped give her a baseline for what to expect when she started returning to the mountains scorched by the Palisades fire.
Simpson is a member of the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter’s Santa Monica Mountains Task Force trail crew, known often by their nickname, the Trailies.
In November, Simpson worked alongside other Trailies on the Bienveneda and Leacock trails in Topanga State Park. The area was badly burned, but still Simpson noticed green sprouts peeking out of the ashy soil and from the branches of trees that the average passerby might assume were dead.
“I just want to think that the trees, the flowers, the [landscape] are not just responding blindly and dumbly — we know they’ve learned to adapt, and humans are learning to adapt as well,” said Simpson, who joined the Trailies in 2017.
Simpson has been forced to adapt. Her home in the Palisades Highlands was among thousands that burned in the Palisades fire, and she alongside her neighbors are grappling with whether to rebuild. Simpson grew up in Mandeville Canyon, and as a kid, she’d head out the door with a sack lunch and friends for a day of unsupervised adventures. It’s hard to imagine not living there.
Trail crew worker Jane Simpson observes a Humboldt’s lily in Santa Ynez Canyon last summer.
(Gaby Valensi)
Before the fire, Simpson could walk out her front door and quickly take one of about five nearby trailheads. She and a neighbor would often “just head out the door and go anywhere,” she said, like the many times they headed along Palisades Drive to Temescal Ridge Trail to Radio Peak, a local name for Temescal Peak.
Those trips helped them learn the local plants and how they changed with the seasons, like how the ceanothus would blossom with blue blooms in early spring. And in Santa Ynez Canyon, Simpson loved spotting the Humboldt’s lilies, knowing the perennials would come back every year.
Even after the devastation of the Palisades fire, she’s seen those lilies return to the same spot they’ve always been.
“A fire-scarred landscape may look dead, but spotting a familiar flower is like seeing old friends,” she said. “It’s reassurance — that some kind of normal is possible. Of course, when it is your own property, there is no normal there, but there is reassurance that for the earth, the wildlife, plants, things will go on, even if I don’t return.”
Lesson 2: We have our own ecological role to play
Trailie crew member Ron Dean is drawn to trail work for creativity. Every 10 minutes, there’s seemingly a new problem the trail crew faces, like, “Where should we put the trail? Should we put the rocks over here? Does this need a drain? How can we move this thing out of the way? It’s wonderful,” he said.
When I asked Dean, who joined the crew 12 years ago, to describe his relationship with the Santa Monica Mountains, he was quick to answer.
“When I’m out in the mountains, I feel like I’m hanging out with my best friend,” Dean said.
A Trailies volunteer works on the Leacock Trail in 2019.
(Jane Simpson)
Dean moved from Wisconsin to L.A. in 1970 for a job and stayed for the climate and landscape. Every Sunday for the past several years, Dean and his son Josh would hike in the Santa Monica Mountains, leaving Dean’s home in the Palisades and often hitting a loop trail to Goat Peak, also referred to by some locals as High Point. After the hike, they’d have brunch and watch football.
That home, which was built in 1951, burned in the Palisades fire. Similar to how he approaches trail work, Dean is looking at how to create a better home for today’s climate, adding solar panels, backup batteries, water recycling and a heat pump system.
Dean is comfortable tackling problems that seemingly have no end. He’s known among his fellow Trailies as the “mustard man” because whenever he sees invasive black mustard — the yellow flowers that cover L.A.’s hillsides in the spring before drying into quick-burning brown twigs — he yanks it out. “Will I win? Of course not,” Dean said.
A member of the Trailies works on Leacock Trail in 2019.
(Jane Simpson)
This is the kind of acceptance Dean has learned from our local mountains — that we can all do our part for as long as we’re here.
Lesson 3: Restoration is a form of reciprocity
In 2012, Rubio Canyon Trail Crew member Sean Green made it his personal mission to restore the Lone Tree Trail in Rubio Canyon. The path, built more than 100 years ago, was constructed so that workers from a municipal water company could reach the utility’s water intakes far into the canyon, Green said.
The trail had been abandoned for decades, but was rediscovered after the 1993 Kinneloa fire ripped through the area. “I decided I loved that trail and I restored it,” Green said.
The Rubio Canyon Trail Crew removes a landslide from the Gooseberry Motorway in 1997.
(Sean Green)
The trail crew’s work is part of a long history of give and take between humans and the canyon.
The lush landscape of chaparral, coast sage scrubs and creek beds was once a stop on the Mount Lowe Railway. The “railway climbed the steep Lake Avenue and crossed the poppy fields into the Rubio Canyon,” according to a local history website. “This part of the trip was called the Mountain Division. At this juncture stood the Rubio Pavilion, a small 12-room hotel. From there the passengers transferred to a cable car funicular which climbed the Great Incline to the top of the Echo Mountain promontory.”
The Rubio Cañon Land and Water Assn. has pulled water from the canyon since the 1880s, delivering it to nearby residents in Altadena. But in the late ’90s, in a still-debated controversy, the water company completed a construction project that sent thousands of yards of debris into the canyon, burying at least three waterfalls.
“Whether by nature’s hand or man’s, with time or with money, Rubio Canyon’s waterfalls will return,” Pasadena Star-News journalist Becky Oskin wrote at the time.
It appears that time has finally come.
Green said heavy rains pushed debris away from the once-covered Maidenhair Falls, a 30-foot cascade named after the Maidenhair ferns that once surrounded it.
The Rubio Canyon Trail Crew, which has worked in the area for more than 25 years, is busy bringing the rest of the canyon’s trails back too.
Claus Boettger, Phil Fujii and Jason Trevor backfill a new retaining wall along the Gooseberry Motorway in 2005. The original road was built in 1923 by Southern California Edison to install electric towers along the foothill ridges. It is now a single-track trail.
(Sean Green)
The Eaton fire ripped through the Rubio Canyon Preserve, seriously damaging the canyon’s chaparral, coast sage scrub and riparian habitats.
Green said his crew has almost finished restoring the Loma Alta Trail and has put in several hours on the Gooseberry Motorway, which takes hikers up and over a ridgeline, eventually into Angeles National Forest. The motorway was originally built by Southern California Edison to install electrical towers, Green said.
The crew has started seeing wildflowers, trees and wildlife all return to the canyon.
“The land is recovering,” Green said. “The Eaton fire caused a lot of damage, burning many houses down and burning the vegetation, but nature is very resilient and it will come back. … The canyon itself is going to take awhile to look like a vegetated canyon bottom because of all the debris that came down, but the rest of Rubio Canyon is going to regrow. It’s going to look pretty, and we’re going to get the trails in shape.”
Lesson 4: Hard work pays off
Lowelifes founder Rob Pettersen repairs a trail in Angeles National Forest.
(Erik Hillard, Lowelifes RCC)
The hiking trails of Angeles National Forest, as a whole, are in far better shape than they were 10 years ago. In spite of repeated wildfires — the Bobcat fire in 2020, the Bridge fire in 2024, the Eaton fire last year — and heavy rains, the trails remain.
I was so focused on the damage of the past year from the Eaton fire and heavy rainfall, I hadn’t zoomed out to consider the bigger picture until I spoke to Rob Pettersen, a founding board member of the Lowelifes Respectable Citizens’ Club.
The Lowelifes are among a dedicated coalition of trail crews that dedicate hundreds of hours every year to reestablishing damaged trails by lugging out fallen and dead trees, moving soil and rock, and more.
“We are moving forward, but Mother Nature has other ideas sometimes,” Pettersen said. “There’s no silver bullet for fixing these trails. They just need constant attention. It’s just the nature of our geology.”
Pettersen has volunteered on trail work crews off and on for the past 20 years, most consistently after Lowelifes was founded in 2019. Pettersen enjoys living in Los Feliz, but like most of us, is drawn to the solace and peace that the mountains provide.
After the 2020 Bobcat fire, which burned through Big Santa Anita Canyon and several other beloved places, the Lowelifes focused several months on restoring the Idlehour Trail, a six-mile jaunt through lush woodland.
“This time last year, Idlehour was in some of the best shape it’s ever been — and then it got melted” in the Eaton fire, Pettersen said. “It’s a very popular [and] special place for Lowelifes folks individually, and the fact we had just completed a lot of work there is kind of brutal.”
This ebb and flow of fire and flood, exacerbated by human-caused climate change, he said, is why the Lowelifes focus on restoring trails to a quality that can withstand harsh conditions.
“Even though we’ve had multiple years now where we’ve done a bunch of trail restoration work and then got hit by several inches of rain in 12 hours,” Pettersen said, “the vast majority of the trail mileage holds up because we do good work so the trail isn’t gone. But the trouble spots — the heavy drainages, the cliffy areas — those are always impacted by debris flow. So it’s a bummer, but it also feels good to be making a difference and doing good work for the community.”
Rob Pettersen cuts through a downed log during a Lowelifes work day on trails in Angeles National Forest.
(Matt Baffert, Lowelifes RCC)
Several Lowelife crew members lost their homes or livelihood in the Eaton fire, including Lowelifes president Matt Baffert. Additionally, the fire also burned up the crew’s tools, which were stored at Baffert’s home.
A year later, though, Baffert and others are rebuilding and moving back, Pettersen said.
That’s in large part because the community rallied behind the Lowelifes. The group received several grants and donations, and the Lowelifes as a nonprofit came out of the fire more financially secure than before. Pettersen said so many volunteers showed up to help that the Lowelifes had to turn people away because they couldn’t safely fit everyone who showed up on the trails to work.
“It’s amazing seeing how many people care about our Lowelifes individually and about our trails and our Angeles National Forest,” Pettersen said. “People care about trails, people care about public lands; that’s been positive and we want to keep building on that.”
This month, the Lowelifes plan — rain and snow permitting — to head back to the Idlehour trail.
The work continues.
3 things to do
Hikers with Hearts for Sight and the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter trek along a path together.
(Joan Schipper, Hearts For Sight)
1. Volunteer as a hiker guide in L.A.
Hearts For Sight and the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter will host their monthly White Cane Hike at 8:30 a.m. Jan. 18 in Griffith Park. Volunteers are needed to guide blind and visually-impaired hikers on a gentle hike from Franklin’s Cafe & Market to a heliport in the park. The hike is free, and lunch is provided. To register, call Hearts for Sight at (818) 457-1482.
2. Make new friends hiking in Elysian Park
LA for the Culture Hiking Club will host a beginner-friendly, free community hike at noon Saturday in Elysian Park. The group will meet at the Grace E. Simons Lodge parking lot before heading onto the Elysian Park West Loop, which offers stunning views of the city. Register at eventbrite.com.
3. Commune with nature and a notebook near Calabasas
California State Parks and Santa Monica Mountains Nature Journal Club will host a nature journaling meetup from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Sunday at Malibu Creek State Park. Participants who are new to nature journaling are invited to take a free introductory course while experienced nature journalers can head into the park. The group will reconvene at noon to share their experiences. Guests are invited to bring a potluck dish to share. Register at eventbrite.com.
The must-read
(Mary Forgione / Los Angeles Times)
One of the first places I go to research a trail is The Times archives because we’ve been writing about the trails and campgrounds of Angeles National Forest for more than 100 years. In all that time, we haven’t slowed down enough to write a comprehensive guide of the forest — until now. I spent the past few months researching and writing what is a part love letter/part guide to help you explore every corner of the 700,000-acre national forest playground that sits right in our backyard. I hope you save this guide and use it for many of your future adventures! I know I will.
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
After the recent rain and snowfall, there are new and serious hazards on our local trails that you must consider before heading out. We have already lost at least three hikers locally this winter. As I’ve written previously, you often need crampons and an ice axe, equipment you need to be experienced using, before heading into a snow hike with elevation gain. I have seen several images on social media of hikers celebrating at the snow-covered Mt. Baldy summit, the highest point in the San Gabriel Mountains, but anyone headed up Baldy needs to understand how dangerous the hike is in winter conditions. As Kyle Fordham, a 36-year-old experienced hiker, told my colleagues, the Devil’s Backbone trail is typically considered the easier option, but it becomes “a death slide” in the winter. “It basically becomes a giant ice cliff,” Fordham said. “If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can very easily die on it.” If you do run into a fellow hiker in need, please help however you can. It can sometimes be the kindness of a stranger that saves a life. Stay safe out there, friends!
For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.
