This Foot Patrol Stalks Beauty and Serenity on Long March to the Sea

He would appear in the late afternoon, walking south through the hills toward Mulholland Drive--a man in his early 60s in ordinary street shoes, his head covered by a terry cloth cap.

He carried no water, and Jill Swift of Tarzana, coming down the mountain from her afternoon hikes, was curious and concerned.

“Where are you bound for?” Swift finally asked one day. Just walking home, he replied, to the other side of the mountains.

His name was Chris Clegg, and he was an Englishman who had competed as a race walker on three continents. For exercise and diversion, Clegg would hike from the San Fernando Valley through the Santa Monica Mountains to Pacific Palisades. There were many ways to do it, and he was so familiar with the network of fire roads and trails that he sketched his own maps.

Swift, a Sierra Club member, was impressed by this and something else: Clegg did not have a car. He came by bus to the Valley to start his hikes and walked or rode a bus to his Beverly Hills apartment after reaching the other side.

‘Unique Outdoor Experience’

“I had never known anybody who did not have a car and was able to get around on the mountains this way,” Swift recalled. “To me, he epitomized some of the things that we’re lacking in the Los Angeles area in terms of . . . using public transportation and being able to get to some of these natural areas for a very unique outdoor experience.”

And Swift also thought: “If he can do it, we can do it too.”

Swift’s meeting with Clegg more than eight years ago inspired the “Valley-to-the-Sea” hike, now something of an institution among local hiking enthusiasts.

One Sunday a month, hikers meet at the end of Reseda Boulevard for the trek to Pacific Coast Highway, a distance of 10 to 15 miles depending which trails are used. And although a few hikers leave cars on the other side, most return to the Valley by RTD bus--as rare an adventure for some as the hike itself.

“It’s a destination hike,” said Swift, 60, who usually serves as leader. “People love to be able to say, ‘I’ve walked from the San Fernando Valley to the ocean.’ ”

“When you tell people, ‘I walked from my house, practically, to the ocean’ . . . I love the reaction,” said Ruth Reingold of Woodland Hills. “I mean, they didn’t know it could be done.”

Normally about 25 hikers show up, with others choosing from a smorgasbord of hikes the Sierra Club leads in area mountains on Sundays. But to avoid competing with volunteer trail building last Sunday at Point Mugu State Park, the selection of hikes was limited, creating a heavy turnout for “Valley-to-the-Sea.”

A mob of 48 hikers showed up last Sunday at the trail head at the end of Reseda Boulevard in day packs, lug soles and T-shirts exhorting “Support Your Local Cat House” and “Save the Chocolate Mousse.” They were from Northridge, Chatsworth and Woodland Hills, but also Long Beach, Pico Rivera, Fullerton and Costa Mesa. There were college professors, aeronautical engineers and homemakers, a bank teller, a real estate salesman, a film projectionist and others. And although a majority were in their 40s and 50s, others were in their 60s or 70s.

Most did not look their age, which one man attributed to hiking.

“I’m actually 150 years old,” he quipped.

“And I’m his father,” another said, “that’s the amazing part.”

The group moved out just after 8 a.m., heading south along Fire Road 28. The dirt road climbed gently along the floor of Caballero Canyon, past sycamores lining the sandy bed of Caballero Creek. In the early morning damp, the land was like an herb garden, with the pungent smell of wet sycamore and sage, and showy white blossoms, called pearly everlasting, leaving a lemony smell on the fingers when touched.

In less than a mile, the road crossed into Topanga State Park, bent sharply southeast and climbed steeply to the hard earthen surface of Mulholland Drive. In front of the hikers, Rustic Canyon, loaded with dense, green growth, opened to the south, while at their backs, Reseda Boulevard etched a line across the Valley to the Santa Susana Mountains, rising in pale blue haze to the north.

It was 8:45 a.m., and time for the day’s only speech. Swift pointed to a nearby ridge that is to be heavily graded for a housing development. “I want you to look at that ridge and remember,” she said. “When the bulldozers come, please don’t call me and say, ‘Why didn’t you do something?’ ”

Crossing over Mulholland Drive, the hikers turned southwest along the Bent Arrow Trail, a rugged footpath clinging precariously to the wall of Rustic Canyon. Much of this trail was built by a man who was going through a divorce and by another then separating from his wife.

Swift would come up the canyon with sandwiches and drinks and hear them pounding away. They had no choice but to cut the trail along a steep slope, “with all kinds of impediments to construction, such as rocks, tree stumps, poison oak . . . ticks etc.,” Swift said.

“It was great therapy,” she said. Their need “to work off negative energies is quite evident in the construction of that trail.”

It may be the sweat and physical exertion, the riot of sights and smells, or maybe just the lack of indoor plumbing, but hiking seems to bring out a certain earthiness in otherwise proper people. One man stopped along the Bent Arrow Trail, announcing as he waved on the last of the women hikers: “Go ahead, I’ve got to water my lily.”

About 9:15 a.m, the hikers reached a saddle, a low point between hills, and paused briefly in an open meadow knee-high in wild oats. Then they turned south onto the Garapito Creek Trail, which corkscrews to the bottom of Garapito Canyon, a deep cleft full of bird song and dense, jungle-like greenery.

The trail turned to the southwest as it climbed from the base of the canyon, opening up to beautiful views of the summits to the west. Just before 10:45 a.m., the trail turned onto Chocolate Ridge and reached Eagle Rock, a huge tan outcropping of conglomerate rock that, at 1,957 feet above sea level, was the highest point on the hike.

Turning down a fire road and then onto the Musch Trail, the group tramped through hilly grasslands into the heart of Topanga State Park. Often during this season, these meadows are ablaze with color, but this has not been a good year for wildflowers. Still, scores of flowers and plants were on display along these trails, including: nicotiana, purple filaree, wild mustard, yellow and sticky monkey flower, golden yarrow, fireweed, deadly nightshade, mountain lilac, wild cucumber, buckwheat, chemise, yucca, morning glory, solanum, showy penstemon, lupine, Mariposa lily, prickly phlox, blue-eyed grass, bird vetch, wild rose and Chinese houses.

By noon, the hikers had covered seven miles, reaching Trippet Ranch, the area of the state park that is accessible by car. Just beyond, they turned onto the East Topanga Fire Road, where the ocean came into view. Ascending a narrow neck of land dividing Topanga and Santa Ynez canyons, the hikers looked down on a study in contrasts: Topanga with its rugged, largely unspoiled green slopes, and Santa Ynez, with its red-tiled roofs in cookie-cutter housing tracts.

On another day--say, of torrential rain or 109-degree heat--these people might have wished they had slept in. But this was a day of brilliant sunshine and cool breezes, and a mood closer to rapture. Asked why they go hiking, here is what some of them said:

“It’s very invigorating. It’s a basic thing,” said John O’Sullivan of Woodland Hills. “You go from point A to point B, and you feel like you’ve accomplished something. And you’ve done it without a skateboard or turbo power.”

“I like the exercise. I like the fresh air. I like the people,” said Dave Morafka of Los Angeles. “There’s a sense of accomplishment in making it to the sea. It’s sort of impressive to look on a map and see the difference between your starting and ending points.”

“Every weekend I go on a hike at least 10 miles long,” said Doug Demers of Canoga Park. “I burn off excess energy from sitting in an office all week . . . I like this hike because when I’m done I can soak my feet in the ocean.”

“If you’re mentally depressed or you have a heartbreak or something that’s bugging you . . . a good hike just seems to clear your mind,” said Reaven Barnes of Reseda.

“I hike once a week, and I hike for the beauty,” said Cathy Govaller of Pico Rivera. “This is my beauty fix . . . Then also there’s the camaraderie of kindred spirits, all out for the beauty of it.”

“I can’t get to the Sierra very often, but I have this in my own back yard, and I feel very fortunate,” said Marcia Ehrlich of Tarzana. “We wear our old comfortable clothes . . . and whatever our titles are during the week that our jobs bestow on us, we’re all people interacting, enjoying the same thing--nature.”

“I get out every Sunday. I’ve taken many 12-, 14-, 16-mile hikes,” said Robert Shoemake of Northridge. “It changes a person’s outlook so much . . . I can get home, and I feel like maybe I’ve been on two or three weeks’ vacation.”

Said Richard Pardi of Woodland Hills: “That’s the purpose of the whole hike: to get to Gladstone’s” fish restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway “for a cold beer. After 15 miles, they’re waiting . . . The mug is in the ice. They see me coming. They just pour.”

About 1:30 p.m., the hikers reached Parker Mesa above Pacific Palisades. To the south and east, foam piled up along the beach and boats scooted in front of the fog-shrouded hump of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The Century City skyline stood out to the east, with the towers of downtown Los Angeles beyond.

No one would have confused the scene with Yosemite or Alaska, but it was very, very nice. In the middle of one of the world’s biggest cities, the hikers had covered a dozen miles of semi-wild lands, accompanied by bird song and astonishingly little trash. Even the austere steel buildings on the horizon did not mar the panorama, conveying instead a sense of natural possibilities in the heart of urban sprawl.

Turning off the East Topanga Fire Road, the hikers descended steeply through dense thickets and a garden of ferns to Los Liones Drive.

A short distance beyond, Pacific Coast Highway served up a rude dose of reality. It took a full five minutes for a red light to part the sea of cars rushing by at near-freeway speeds. But finally there opened a path to the beach, and a chance to dip tired feet in the ocean.

It was a little after 2 p.m. All over Los Angeles, people were coming off the back nine, or battling the crowds at shopping malls, or watching the game of the week. And 48 hikers were completing a walk from the Valley to the sea.