New Year’s Day was exceptionally bright and warm, the sort of day we could brag about to shivering relations back east, if we felt like rubbing it in.
As I parked at Griffith Park at 10 a.m., in the lot above the Greek Theatre, the temperature was already in the mid-60s. Even as someone likelier to be cold than not, it seemed wise to leave my sweater in my car and proceed in short sleeves.
For decades I had, like much of Southern California, studiously ignored this 4,200-acre amenity.
Last year, though, armed with Casey Schreiner’s “Discovering Griffith Park” guidebook, I made 10 solo hikes. On the first, an easy one around the Hollywood Reservoir last January, a rare thing occurred in Los Angeles: I bumped into someone I know.
That was my friend Adriana Chavira, who was returning to her car after hiking to the Wisdom Tree. Adriana sat one desk over in the Daily Bulletin newsroom when I started there almost 28 years ago. Now a teacher, the enthusiastic hiker and marathon runner visits Griffith Park pretty much weekly.
On the first day of 2025, our plan was to finally do a joint hike. We were going to go up Mount Hollywood, one of the park’s peaks. Joining us was a friend of Adriana’s who, like her, is an ambitious hiker. Ersula Martell was fitted out in a David Bowie T-shirt and walking a bit slowly after recent foot surgery.
We set off up Vermont Canyon Road and Observatory Road toward Griffith Observatory, from there heading north through a wooded area named the Berlin Forest. Created in 1967, it’s dedicated to the bond between the two sister cities 5,795 miles apart.
Having visited Berlin, which is home to my former Claremont neighbor Naomi Kresge, I was delighted to be seeing this local connection to that city.
We pressed on along the Mount Hollywood Trail. Dozens of walkers were going up or coming down. Some would offer a joyful “Happy new year” to anyone they passed.
As the trail turned to dirt, ahead of us a man walked a dalmatian on a leash, an eye-catching sight.
“We’re on a fire road,” Adriana said of the wide, rustic path.
“If it’s a fire road,” I said, “that explains the dalmatian.”
Switchbacks made the ascent relatively easy. We took brief pauses at Captain’s Roost, a volunteer garden whose name sounds like a seafood restaurant, and at the Tiffany & Co. overlook. Its westward view offered the best glimpse of the Hollywood Sign on nearby Mount Lee before the trail took us east.
The dalmatian and his human were still plugging along, the dalmatian drawing excited comments from children. No dalmatian owner is going to be lonely for long.
Coming up behind us on the trail, a runner stopped to exclaim. She and Adriana are both members of the Valley Runners club. They hugged and got a photo together, courtesy of Ersula, before the friend resumed her jog up the trail.
“Los Angeles is like a small town,” I told Adriana, “at least for you.” She said that’s especially true as a teacher. A few nights earlier, in line for concessions at the AMC, a former student had sold her popcorn.
Finally, we reached the former Mount Hollywood Summit, known since 2021 as the Tom LaBonge Panorama. That’s named for the councilman who died earlier that year. The peak, 1,625 feet high, offers a 360-degree view and was a favorite spot of LaBonge’s.
LaBonge and I met once. We were introduced in 2017 at an event in Hollywood by Upland resident Gary Goltz. LaBonge was friendly but of course would have been friendlier had I been covering L.A. rather than the eastern suburbs. When we parted, LaBonge told me: “Keep an eye on Ontario.”
Signs with panoramic photos identified visible landmarks, from Mount Baldy to L.A. City Hall to Century City and beyond. Haze obscured some of the more distant places, like Catalina. But Ersula pointed out San Jacinto Peak, silhouetted far to the east in Riverside County.
A couple dozen people were at the Mount Hollywood summit, admiring the views and taking photos. A group of five young people were chatting about Christmas when Festivus and the airing of grievances came up.
One couldn’t immediately place the “Seinfeld” reference. His friends gently ribbed him.
Before we left, they asked Ersula to take a group photo of them facing different directions, Hollywood Sign in the background, as if it were a band photo for an album cover. It was hilarious.
We headed down the way we’d come. I told Adriana that at dinner the previous night, a diner had brought up, and I quote, “that ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit about the Soup Nazi.”
“Must be a young person,” she said. I told her no, it was a guy older than us.
Partway down, Adriana encountered a second friend, a woman who is a volunteer coach for Students Run L.A., a nonprofit that trains students to run in the L.A. Marathon. Two bump-ins on one hike? Impressive.
Ersula’s foot was bothering her a bit, but she kept going. This was her first hike since foot surgery in October. She had climbed nine peaks in 2024. She plans to repeat that feat in 2025, with Baldy Peak up soon.
“Be careful,” I cautioned her. “You don’t want to peak early.”
We stopped at Dante’s View, a volunteer garden created in the 1960s by a man named Dante Orgolini. There are benches, water and picnic tables.
One bench has a donor nameplate from Gunjit and Margarete Strand that reads: “How perfect is this. How lucky we always were.”
We returned to Griffith Observatory, stopped at the restrooms and took photos with the angel wings and at the James Dean bust. At the latter I tried to look appropriately anguished.
Eventually we reached the Greek Theatre parking lot again, now mobbed with cars and people hunting for spaces. It was 70 degrees. I was satisfied, but tired and hungry.
Our hike took two hours, gave us an elevation gain of 650 feet and saw us walk 4 1/2 miles. Adriana said it was the easiest hike she would do this year. Ersula agreed it was no sweat. I envied them.
And I hope your 2025 is off to as glorious a start.
David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, three valleys. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X.
