The rock formations above are near the top of Saddle Peak, in the Santa Monica Mountains, near Los Angeles. Virtually all have been climbed, and climbers will be seen on Corpse Wall (photo center) most weekends.
I took the photo while doing the Topanga Lookout Ridge Loop. I do the loop clockwise from the trailhead on Stunt Road that’s across from the start of Calabasas Peak Mtwy fire road. The bottom of Topanga Lookout Ridge is about three-quarters of a mile up the fire road.
A use trail ascends the ridge. The easiest route requires a little straightforward scrambling but bypasses the more exposed climbing on the crest of the ridge. There are four or five optional segments where the rocky crest can be followed instead of the use trail.
Adventurers driving to the remote resort likely would have stopped at the Shell gas station at Brent’s Junction — the intersection of Ventura Blvd. (Hwy 101) and Las Virgenes Road.
Clearing clouds along the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains from Bulldog Mtwy fire road. The photograph was taken on a recent run of a variation of the Bulldog Loop.
Multihued leaves of a turning California sycamore near the seasonal bridge on Malibu Creek. The photograph was taken on a recent run of a variation of the Bulldog Loop.
It had taken me about an hour to reach the benchmark from the Wendy Drive trailhead. It would take another hour to scramble up the ridge to the high point on the crest (unofficially “Boney Point”), and then another hour to work over Tri Peaks to the Backbone Trail and the summit of Sandstone Peak.
La Jolla Valley, Anacapa, and Santa Cruz Island from Boney Mountain
Once again, I got to the summit of Sandstone when no one was on the peak. After recording a video panorama from the summit, I scrambled back down the peak and then headed west on the Backbone Trail to the top of the Chamberlain Trail. Boney Bluff looms above the trail here and marks the beginning of the long descent to the Old Boney Trail.
On the way down Chamberlain, I talked to a hiker that was also doing an adventurous loop from the Wendy Drive Trailhead. At the top of the Chamberlain Trail he was planning to take the Tri Peaks Trail to Tri Peaks, and then work over to “Boney Point.” From there, he was going to descend the Lost Cabin Trail.
Western escarpment of Boney Mountain
At the bottom of the Chamberlain Trail I turned right on the Old Boney Trail and continued down to Blue Canyon. I hadn’t been through Blue Canyon since January and was curious to see how it fared after all the rainy season storms. The canyon is filled with rocky debris from millennia of flash floods. Flooding in the canyon sometimes obliterates sections of the Backbone Trail. Today, it looked like use and trailwork had reestablished washed out sections of the meandering trail.
