Rocks and Rockets

If you like your sunsets at mountaintop level, with 360-degree views of the ocean, distant peaks and twinkling city lights, head for Sage Ranch on Saturday.

Jim Laing, a docent for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, is leading a sunset hike at this park, tucked into the Santa Susana Mountains just a few minutes from the Simi and San Fernando valleys.

Laing, an archeologist and a teacher, will set out at 4 p.m. for a leisurely 2.5-mile loop around the park. The hike, on a rough dirt road, should take about 2 1/2 hours.

Trekking over this 624-acre spread will make you feel like you’ve been plunked down on a Western movie set. The scruffy chaparral-covered hills are dotted with huge sandstone rocks and outcroppings.

At dusk as darkness creeps in, those odd-shaped rock formations will seem even more impressive and forbidding. But Laing will be keeping an eye out for something else: animals--coyotes, deer, bobcats, lizards and especially birds.

“It’s a good place to go bird watching,” Laing said. “There are lots of raptors in the park.” At dusk, he says, the chances of spotting a hawk, vulture or owl are pretty good.

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But the most amazing thing about this wilderness area has nothing to do with nature. The park’s next door neighbor is Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana facility, where the company tests rocket engines.

The testing generally isn’t done on weekends, but hikers hitting the trail on weekdays might find their tranquillity rattled during a test--described by a company spokesman as a “loud, deep roar” lasting 10 to 40 seconds.

It happens about once or twice a week, which is a far cry from the intensive testing the company conducted during the Apollo space program of the 1960s.

“The animals have adapted to it over the years,” said Laing, who grew up in Woodland Hills and remembers the windows rattling from the tests.

Hikers won’t escape a view of Rocketdyne’s buildings on the trail that loops around the park, which once was a cattle ranch. (Look for the old cattle chute across the road from the parking lot.) Orrin Sage bought the property, on Black Canyon Road near Woolsey Canyon Road, in the late 1940s and the family put in orange and avocado trees that still stand.

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy spent $4.2 million to acquire the site, and it opened two years ago. In a secluded oak grove high on the property, the conservancy installed 10 campsites for tents.

Originally, they were open to any campers, but because of funding shortages they are now available only to groups by reservation.

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The spacious 4,000-square-foot home the Sage family built atop the property is not open to the public, except for the pay telephone located there.

Laing’s hike is a fairly easy-going trek, but not one for parents with kids in strollers. Along the way, he will explain how the Chumash Indians populated the area long before the Spanish arrived, and he will stop to point out plants used by the Chumash for food and medicine.

He will probably talk about how the acorns from the oak trees were a staple for the Native Americans who could grind it and make a kind of porridge. They used the Yerba Santa plant as an analgesic for muscle aches, among other uses.

“It’s a wonderful plant,” he said.

DETAILS

* WHAT: Docent-led sunset hike.

* WHEN: 4 p.m. Saturday.

* WHERE: Sage Ranch, on Black Canyon Road near Woolsey Canyon Road in the Santa Susana Mountains south of Simi Valley. From the Ventura Freeway, take Valley Circle north, then Woolsey Canyon Road west, following the signs for Rocketdyne. Park is near the intersection of Woolsey Canyon Road and Black Canyon Road.

* HOW MUCH: Free.

* FYI: (310) 589-3200.