I’d been wanting to do this hike for quite some time and was pretty excited about it. The description said we had to hike through pockets of poison oak so we thought mid February would be a good day to do it, not so hot so we all could be wearing long pants. The description also said the hike is 5 miles and approximately 3 hours long.
The hike started off at Will Rogers old house in Pacific Palisades and we were chilling on the polo field while waiting for everyone to arrive.
Since it is winter and it has been a little colder lately, we started a little later than usual, we felt we didn’t have to get up at cracker dawn to beat the heat. It turned out though, that it just happen to be a hot day today anyway!
We took it fairly slow, we haven’t hiked in a while and are all out of the hiking shape.
Los Angeles can be pretty dirty, ugly and runned down when you are in the middle of it, but looking down on it from a distance with snow covered mountains in the background is pretty neat!
Then turning 180 degrees and get the views over the Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island is not so bad either!
We stopped for an orange break at where we thought was halfway.
It was around here that everyone started to get a little tired and cranky…
And it was around here that we realized we had missed a turn and had hiked about 30 minutes in the wrong direction.
We finally made it back to the junction, it was a pretty obvious junction, but everyone had been busy thinking of air-conditioned rooms and cold beverages so we missed it.
The hike down was really cool, it was steep and the rain had shaped the hiking path to a deep dried out creek.
We made it to the bottom and everyone was happy to find the water filled creek so we could cool down.
I am always fascinated by all the abandoned houses, structures and junk we come across on our hikes. I can never really wrap my head around why it’s just left there, and I find it a little creepy. 
We got a little lost again, but backtracked and found a sign before we had wandered off too long.
We had to cross the creek a few times… 
…before the trail eventually just disappeared and we had to wade through the creek for the last two miles.
It was pretty deep at some places!
About 6 hours later we finally made it back to Will Rogers park, we usually have lunch together after the hikes, but no one was in the mood for it today, everyone just wanted to go home and do nothing!