Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Hiking Conejo Open Space


Fire, it has been a destructive force in the West for many years, especially in the year 2013 with major fires in California, Colorado, Arizona and a host of other Western states. I recently decided to hike in the Conejo open space area West of Los Angeles which recently suffered some major fire damage.


When you hike through fire-damaged areas, it looks like you are hiking on the Moon.



Despite all of this destruction, there were signs of life poking out here and there.


The trail itself was a steady uphill climb which reminded me of how out of hiking-shape I have become recently but eventually you gain a saddle and can continue going up or heading down into another Valley.

(the junction)

I chose to explore up the hill, which lead to more burnout and also explored down the valley which kept dropping all the precious elevation that I gained. More depressing would be that I would have to walk back up the incline but my legs were feeling better and I did it without too much hassle. They say roundtrip is 9.5 miles but methinks it longer than that, even though I didn't go to the end of the trail.

The true standout of this area is the geology. I am no rock doctor but man was volcanism (or whatever you call it ) was putting on a display.




There were very few people on the trail so I mostly had the mountains to myself. After looking my pictures of what this area looked like before the fire, it looks beautiful with its green bushes and I can't wait for it to grow back and do some more exploring over there.

Here is a link to the Open Space's trail descriptions: http://www.conejo-openspace.org/trail_system.htm





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