While LA seems more like a concrete jungle than an actual jungle, there are in fact some amazing outdoor adventures that will indulge your thirst for natural beauty and your hunger for physical exercise.

Above the Concrete Jungle
Take the Topanga State National Park as a jumping off point.  With 36 miles of trails, it is considered to be the world’s largest wilderness within the boundaries of a major city.  The Santa Ynez trail is a good start.  The trailhead is located in Pacific Palisades near Gladstone’s famous restaurant, hidden in a residential area, and descends into the Santa Ynez Canyon. 

From Beginners to Experts
The cool thing about this hike is the variety of terrain: dried-up streambeds speckled with rocks, waterfalls, small cliff gardens boasting beautiful solitary flowers, crumbling sandstone, thick green bamboo straws evoking images of the rainforest, small caves, and much more. This trail is great because it continuously gives you opportunities to take separate paths of radically different terrain, so if you’re feeling up to it, you can traverse through the challenging stuff or take it nice and breezy on the more traveled paths. If you’re lucky, you might even get a chance to see a mother deer and her baby scoping out the mountainside or munching on some foliage. 

A Happy Ending
The end of the trail is unique because hikers can scale up three separate rock faces on previously installed climbing ropes. The first one is easy, only about five to six feet in length. Make sure you have a good grip and lean back to get balance. The last two are a little more challenging, about eight to twelve feet high, so be careful and properly prepared. 

Bottom line: this trail is fantastic for anyone who wants to spend a solid few hours hiking and having fun.

Want to know more?  Click here and spend the afternoon hiking Escondido Canyon Park with Varius Batty.  Let him be your local tour guide.