Friday afternoon, May 18, I drove up Big Tujunga Canyon Road, past the bail-out LZ in the wash, and on to the first bridge across the river. I found a way down to the river between a couple back yards that might actually have been legal, and waded across the river to get to the mouth of Gold Canyon. The first couple miles of Gold Canyon form a beautiful open valley with innumerable deer and rabbit tracks. Two or three times, deer bounded away ahead of me. Then there are a couple tight switchbacks, the valley forks, and changes character entirely. Soon I was scrambling over boulders in a narrow canyon, between steep banks of gray-white mud that looked exactly like spilled concrete. The high cliffs of unconsolidated sandstone evidently shed mud and rocks at an incredible rate, and this would be the world's worst place to be in a rainstorm. Just as I was concluding that the upper section of this canyon was impassable, I pulled myself up through the dead branches of a manzanita bush that had been swallowed by the canyon, and emerged onto a lush green meadow. I had reached the top of the cliffs, and the top of the Yerba Buena Ridge, known to us simply as Big T. Everything was in bloom, and even I couldn't help but admire the flowers.
It's amazing what remote and gorgeous countryside one can find just a few miles away from the teeming millions in Los Angeles.
