Explore the Best Hikes in Los Angeles for Every Skill Level

Friendly Urban Treks: Runyon Canyon and Griffith Park

Look, if you're new to hiking in Los Angeles, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of trail options—and honestly, by the city's reputation for intensity. But the two best entry points for beginners aren't hidden gems; they're Runyon Canyon and Griffith Park, and they couldn't be more different despite sitting just a few miles apart. Runyon Canyon’s main loop clocks in at only 2.6 miles, but don't let the short distance fool you—it gains about 850 feet of elevation, which means you're basically climbing a 60-story building on dirt. That steepness burns roughly 300 calories for an average person in under an hour, making it a shockingly efficient workout if you're short on time. And here's a detail most people miss: the park sits directly on the Raymond Fault, so those dramatic rock formations you pass are literally the result of millions of years of tectonic uplift, not just erosion. There's also a weird bit of old Hollywood history baked into the landscape—the trail passes the ruins of a silent film star's mansion, including a stone wall and a swimming pool foundation that's still visible if you know where to look.

But here's what I really find interesting: despite its reputation as a celebrity dog-walking spot, a 2024 UCLA study found that over 70% of Runyon Canyon's visitors are actually locals from adjacent neighborhoods, not tourists. That totally flips the narrative. The park is small—just a patch of land in the Hollywood Hills—but it's packed with variety: you get an easy paved path on one side, and a surprisingly rugged outer trail that'll test your lungs on the other. So if you want a quick, social, moderately intense urban hike where you might spot someone famous, Runyon is your move. But if you want space, solitude, and a genuinely wild experience without leaving the city, Griffith Park is the real answer.

Griffith Park spans 4,310 acres—that's more than Central Park, San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, and Balboa Park combined, by a huge margin. The Ferndell Trail near the park's entrance is a flat, shaded path under half a mile long that follows a rare perennial stream, creating a microclimate of ferns and sycamores that feels completely out of place in the arid city. Over 6.5 million people visit Griffith Park annually, but fewer than 5% ever go beyond the main Observatory and Greek Theatre areas, which means you can find hundreds of miles of trails nearly empty on weekdays. The soil itself is a time capsule: it contains high concentrations of ancient marine fossils from the Miocene epoch, including shark teeth and whale bones, because the entire Los Angeles Basin was submerged under the Pacific Ocean about 15 million years ago. So if you're a beginner looking for a hike that feels like a real escape, Griffith Park offers vastly more terrain, far fewer crowds, and a deeper connection to the natural history of the region. My advice? Start with the Ferndell loop to build confidence, then graduate to the Western Canyon Trail for a moderate climb—and reward yourself with a pizza at the nearby spot on Western Avenue. Both parks give you the quintessential LA experience: that iconic 45-foot Hollywood Sign (originally erected in 1923 as a real estate ad reading "Hollywoodland") visible from every ridge. But one is a fast, social burn, and the other is a sprawling, quiet adventure. Choose based on your mood, not your skill level.

Friendly Waterfall Hikes: Eaton Canyon Falls and Switzer Falls

If you’re looking for a hike that actually works with kids—meaning it’s short enough to hold their attention but still feels like a real adventure—Eaton Canyon and Switzer Falls are your two best bets in the LA area. But here’s the thing: they’re not interchangeable. Eaton Canyon is the easy win: a flat, 3.5-mile round trip with only 600 feet of elevation gain, which is basically nothing for a waterfall hike. You cross the creek bed a dozen times, which kids absolutely love, and the payoff is a 40-foot horsetail waterfall sliding over anorthosite rock from the San Gabriel Mountains’ ancient core. It’s the same rock that makes up parts of the moon’s highlands, believe it or not. Over 300,000 people visit annually, so you’re rarely alone, but fewer than 10% push past the main falls into the upper canyon, where smaller cascades and deep pools offer actual solitude. That’s the move if you want to escape the crowds without driving farther.

Switzer Falls is a different animal entirely. It’s a 50-foot drop into a plunge pool that stays a constant 58°F year-round—cold enough to make you gasp even in July. The trailhead sits at 3,000 feet, so the air is typically 10 to 15 degrees cooler than downtown LA, which is a huge advantage on a scorching afternoon. But the trail is also a living history lesson: you walk through the footprint of the 2009 Station Fire, which burned over 160,000 acres, and as of 2026 you still see charred stumps next to dense new growth of chamise and ceanothus. There’s also the ruins of Switzer’s Camp, a 1920s resort that hosted Hollywood elites, with concrete foundations and a rusted water tower still standing. The Arroyo Seco that powers the falls was the site of a deadly 1938 flood that killed over 100 people, and modern flood-control dams now regulate its flow—a reminder that this is a landscape shaped by violence as much as by beauty.

So which one wins for families? Honestly, it depends on your tolerance for crowds and your kids’ energy levels. Eaton Canyon is the safer bet for younger children: the trail is flatter, the crossing is fun, and the waterfall is iconic (it’s where the Terminator first appears in the 1984 film, though they shot it at a different angle to hide the crowds). But watch out for the California newts—they secrete tetrodotoxin, the same neurotoxin as pufferfish, so no letting dogs or toddlers mouth random critters. Switzer Falls demands a bit more driving and a steeper hike, but the payoff is cooler temps, a genuine sense of remoteness, and a chance to see bigcone Douglas-fir trees that can live over a thousand years. Both trails sit on the San Andreas Fault system’s influence zone, and at Eaton Canyon you can actually spot fault gouge—a crushed, clay-like material from ancient earthquakes that most hikers mistake for mud. To me, that’s worth stopping for. If you want a quick, reliable waterfall experience with minimal whining, pick Eaton. If you want a cooler, quieter, more dramatic outing that doubles as a field trip in geology and wildfire ecology, Switzer is the clear winner.

Moderate Coastal Rambles with Ocean Views

Let’s be honest: when most people think of hiking in Los Angeles, they picture the dusty, sun-beaten trails of the interior canyons or the celebrity-packed switchbacks of Runyon. But the moderate coastal rambles along the Palos Verdes Peninsula and the Santa Monica Bay bluffs offer something entirely different—a rare blend of ocean views, ecological complexity, and a creeping sense of geological drama that you just don’t get anywhere else in the city. I’m talking about trails like the 7.2-mile out-and-back on the Vicente Bluffs or the 4.5-mile loop through Abalone Cove, where the elevation gain stays under 600 feet but the payoff is a constant, shifting panorama of the Pacific. Here’s the thing most guides miss: these trails are eroding beneath your feet. The Los Angeles coastal bluffs are retreating at an average rate of two to six inches per year, which means that the edge you walk today will be measurably closer to the ocean by next summer. That’s not a theoretical concern—it’s a real, measurable phenomenon that forces trail managers to reroute sections every few years, and it’s one of the reasons these routes feel so alive and unpredictable.

What makes these rambles truly fascinating, though, is the layered history written into the landscape. Several sections of the trail follow the original right-of-way for the old Red Car trolley system, which ran along the Palos Verdes Peninsula until 1940—and you can still occasionally snag a boot on a buried steel rail that’s working its way up through the soil. Then there’s the Portuguese Bend landslide complex, an active geological zone that’s been moving at a rate of several feet per year since the 1950s, continuously reshaping the trail and forcing hikers to navigate across a surface that literally cracks and shifts underfoot. It’s a humbling reminder that this isn’t just a scenic walk; it’s a walk across a landscape that’s actively being remade. And the views themselves? They’re not as pristine as the postcards suggest. The ocean water you see from the viewpoints contains up to 200 times more microplastic particles than the open Pacific, thanks to the trapping effect of the Santa Monica Bay’s circulation patterns. You’ll also notice a distinct horizontal line of haze on clear days—that’s the marine layer inversion, where cool air gets trapped under warm air, and it can obscure Catalina Island even when the sky looks cloudless. It’s a weird, humbling optical illusion that reminds you how much atmospheric complexity sits between you and that horizon.

But here’s where the real value kicks in for a hiker who wants more than just a pretty view. These moderate coastal routes were deliberately planned to avoid the sensitive nesting sites of the California grunion, a small fish that beaches itself to lay eggs on the full moon high tides from March through August—so you’re walking through a corridor that’s been designed around the reproductive cycle of a fish, which is a level of ecological consideration most trail networks don’t even attempt. The coastal sage scrub ecosystem along these bluffs has one of the highest rates of plant endemism in North America, meaning you’re walking through a botanical environment found nowhere else on Earth. The persistent coastal fog that often drapes these trails deposits up to ten inches of water equivalent annually through a process called fog drip, making it a critical water source for plants during the dry summer months—and it’s also why the trail can feel cool and damp even when downtown LA is baking at 95°F. And if you’re into weird Cold War history, several trailheads sit on land that was once part of a Nike missile defense site, with concrete foundations of radar towers still visible just off the main path. So if you’re looking for a moderate hike that delivers ocean views, real geological action, rare plant life, and a dose of military archaeology, skip the crowded inland trails and head for the bluffs. Just watch your step—the edge is closer than you think.

Mount Hollywood and Beyond

Look, if you’ve been hiking long enough, you know the feeling: the beginner trails start to feel like a warm-up, and you’re craving something that actually tests your legs and your lungs. Mount Hollywood is often dismissed as just another Griffith Park walk, but that’s a mistake—the summit sits at 1,625 feet, and the 3-mile round trip gains roughly 800 feet of elevation, which is a legit 8% average grade that will make your quads burn if you push it. Here’s the stat that got me: a 2025 survey by the Griffith Park Advisory Board found that fewer than 12% of the park’s annual 6.5 million visitors ever reach that summit. That means the panoramic view of the Los Angeles Basin, stretching from downtown to the Pacific, is one of the most underutilized vistas in the city. And the trail itself has a weird history—it was originally a fire road carved for horse-drawn carriages in the 1920s, so the switchbacks are wide and forgiving, but the steepest section cuts through a grove of non-native eucalyptus planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, and on warm afternoons the air smells like a Vicks VapoRub factory.

But here’s what I find really interesting: the real challenge isn’t the climb itself, it’s the decision to keep going past the summit. An unmarked social trail branches off near the top leading to a collapsed stone shelter built by the Works Progress Administration in 1938—most hikers walk right past it, but if you scramble up the loose dirt (which is stained reddish from manganese and iron oxides, by the way, and will permanently discolor your shoes), you get a completely different perspective of the Hollywood Sign and the San Gabriel Mountains rising behind downtown. That visual compression trick—the mountains look like they’re right behind the skyline, but they’re actually over 15 miles away—is the same optical illusion that makes the view feel almost surreal. And on clear winter days following a rain, you can see Santa Catalina Island 22 miles offshore, because the marine layer hasn’t yet trapped particulates near the surface. So Mount Hollywood is a solid test for experienced hikers who want a quick, punishing ascent with a reward that most people never bother to claim. But if you’re looking for something beyond—something that actually pushes your limits—you need to look past the sign.

For a true step up, I’d point you toward Temescal Canyon, which gains about 900 feet in just 2.5 miles, or the full loop of Mount Lee—the actual highest point in Griffith Park at 1,708 feet, which is where the back of the Hollywood Sign sits, but the trail is steeper, less maintained, and often closed for security reasons, so you have to plan carefully. If you want to go even bigger, the Mount Baldy summit via the Devil’s Backbone trail is the classic LA endurance test: 13 miles round trip with over 4,000 feet of gain, and the last mile is a knife-edge ridge with exposed drop-offs that will wake up any complacent hiker. The point is, Mount Hollywood is the gateway drug—it gives you the confidence and the fitness to tackle the harder stuff, but it also teaches you something crucial about LA hiking: the best views are the ones you have to earn, and most people stop too soon. So go ahead, bag Mount Hollywood, find that collapsed WPA shelter, and take a moment to realize you’re one of the 12%. Then start planning your next summit.

Scenic Nature Walks with City and Canyon Vistas at the Getty Center

Most people think of the Getty Center as a place you go to look at art indoors—and that’s true, but it’s also one of the most underrated scenic nature walks in Los Angeles, and I’d argue it belongs on any serious hiker’s rotation. Here’s what I mean: the Central Garden alone, designed by artist Robert Irwin, contains over 500 varieties of plant material, and the azalea maze is pruned with such precision that it blooms in a specific sequence, creating a wave of color that moves from the top of the garden to the bottom over the course of the season—that’s not just landscaping, that’s a living choreography. But the real magic is in the details most people miss. The travertine stone cladding the museum’s pavilions comes from a quarry in Bagni di Tivoli, Italy, and it’s packed with fossils of ancient leaves and plant matter that are over 1.5 million years old, so when you’re walking past those walls, you’re literally brushing against the Miocene epoch. That’s a level of geological storytelling you don’t get on any canyon trail.

The tram ride up from the parking structure is its own experience—it’s a 134,000-square-foot system powered by a regenerative drive that feeds energy back into the grid during braking, which means every descent is technically generating electricity for the site. And once you’re at the top, the orientation of the white steel-and-glass pavilions becomes obvious: they’re aligned precisely along a north-south axis to minimize direct sunlight on the artwork, but that same decision creates these dramatic, shifting shadows across the walkways that make the whole complex feel like a giant sundial. The cactus and succulent garden is a revelation if you pay attention to the microclimate—the species there survive on as little as 10 inches of rain per year, and because of the hilltop’s elevation, they capture fog drip that adds another 8 to 12 inches of moisture equivalent annually, which is the same phenomenon that sustains the coastal sage scrub on the Palos Verdes bluffs. So you’re essentially walking through a curated version of the same ecological processes that define Southern California’s native landscapes, just with better architecture.

If the weather cooperates—and I mean a truly clear day, not the typical hazy marine layer—the observation deck offers a direct line of sight to the Pacific Ocean, with Santa Catalina Island visible roughly 22 miles offshore. That’s the same visual compression trick that makes the mountains behind downtown look deceptively close, and it’s one of the few places in LA where you can see the basin, the coastline, and the inland ranges all in a single sweep. Meanwhile, the Harold M. Williams Auditorium sits on a specialized seismic isolation system that allows the entire structure to slide up to 26 inches during an earthquake without damage—a piece of engineering that most visitors never think about, but it means the ground beneath your feet is literally designed to move independently of the building. And all of this sits on 110 acres of grounds that include over 20,000 trees, many of which are California oaks that were carefully preserved during construction, with some individual specimens costing over $100,000 to protect and relocate. So when I recommend the Getty Center as a scenic nature walk, I’m not being cute—I’m pointing you toward a place where art, ecology, geology, and engineering converge in a way no canyon trail can replicate. Just go early, before the crowds, and let yourself notice the fossils in the stone.

Epic Backcountry Adventures in the Angeles National Forest

Let’s get one thing straight right now: the Angeles National Forest is not a weekend stroll with a water bottle and some good intentions. It’s a 700,000-acre wilderness that sits directly above one of the most densely populated urban areas in North America, yet fewer than 3% of its annual visitors ever push more than two miles past a trailhead. That statistic should stop you cold. It means the vast majority of people are experiencing maybe 15 miles of the forest’s 700-mile trail network, while the real backcountry—the stuff that actually tests your legs, your navigation skills, and your comfort with solitude—remains almost entirely empty. And I’m not talking about a gentle ramble through chaparral. I’m talking about the Silver Moccasin Trail, a 53-mile route originally blazed by Boy Scouts in the 1940s, where the northern segment is so poorly maintained that you’ll be bushwhacking through manzanita thickets that stand 12 feet high. That’s not a hike. That’s a negotiation with the landscape.

Here’s what I find genuinely fascinating from a research perspective: the forest’s most remote areas sit on geology that’s actively moving beneath you. Mount San Antonio, better known as Mount Baldy, rises to 10,064 feet, but GPS surveys show its summit ridge is shifting by roughly 0.2 inches per year due to the underlying fault zone. That’s not a theoretical risk—that’s a measurable, ongoing deformation that means the mountain you climb this summer will be microscopically different from the one you climbed last year. And the Pacific Crest Trail, which cuts a 42-mile swath through the forest, crosses the San Andreas Fault at three separate points. At the Vincent Gap crossing, the fault’s movement has offset the trail by over 10 feet since it was originally cut in the 1970s, forcing hikers to scramble across a jagged scarp that didn’t exist when the trail was built. You can literally see the ground shifting under your feet, and most people just walk past it without realizing they’re crossing one of the most seismically active zones on the planet. That’s the kind of detail that separates a casual hike from a genuinely epic backcountry experience.

But here’s where the real value kicks in for someone who wants more than just mileage. The forest contains a relict population of California red-legged frogs in a single, unnamed creek above 6,000 feet—a species thought extinct in the region until a 2022 survey rediscovered it, separated by over 50 miles from the next nearest breeding site. You can also find ancient limber pines near the summit of Mount Lewis that have been dendrochronologically dated to over 1,200 years old, making them the oldest living organisms in the entire Los Angeles Basin. And then there’s the “Bridge to Nowhere,” a 120-foot concrete arch built in 1936 for a highway that was never completed, standing in the Sheep Mountain Wilderness. The round-trip hike to reach it is 10 miles, and it crosses the San Gabriel River 11 times, which means you’re wading through cold, fast-moving water in a canyon where the average annual sediment yield is 12,000 tons—one of the highest per-square-mile rates in the continental US. The bridge’s abutments are anchored directly into the same granite pluton that forms the core of Mount Whitney, which is a humbling reminder that you’re standing on the same bedrock as the highest peak in the lower 48. So if you’re looking for a backcountry adventure that combines real physical challenge, active geology, ancient biology, and a dose of abandoned infrastructure, the Angeles National Forest is arguably the most underutilized wilderness within 90 minutes of a major American city. Just don’t expect a trail marker every quarter mile. The forest doesn’t care about your comfort.