Here's how to see the Getty Center without reservations, without cost and without crowds: Take a hike on the new Getty View Trail, which opened in June.
While you won't see any art en route, you will get an inspiring view of the world's most expensive art facility from a ridge above Sepulveda Pass. You'll also get a bird's-eye view of two of the world's priciest neighborhoods, Bel-Air and Brentwood.
For the Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday December 27, 1998 Home Edition Travel Part L Page 4 Travel Desk 1 inches; 28 words Type of Material: Correction
Hiking--Due to an editing error, the map on the Getty View Trail (Dec. 20) mismarked the location of the trail in the inset. The trail is east of Interstate 405, across the freeway from the Getty Museum.
In 1769, Capt. Gaspar de Portola, commander of the first Spanish land exploration of California, marched through Sepulveda Pass into the San Fernando Valley. Today the San Diego Freeway extends through the pass, which connects the Los Angeles Basin and the city's Westside with the southern San Fernando Valley.
The view has changed immeasurably since the 1840s, when Francisco Sepulveda rode through this gap in the Santa Monica Mountains and over his 30,000-acre Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica. The pass, along with a long boulevard (the longest road in Los Angeles County), a flood control basin and many other features, was named for the Sepulvedas, major 19th century Southern California landowners.
The new path is surely one of the most freeway-convenient in the Southland. Instead of idling along in heavy traffic, frustrated commuters could exit on Sepulveda and take a hike. From the top of the trail, hikers can gather their own traffic reports; the view down onto the San Diego Freeway rivals that of a helicopter news crew. The new path was constructed by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority with funding by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. Caltrans funded the spiffy trail head.
Getty View Trail switchbacks up the brushy slopes east of Sepulveda Pass to meet dirt East Sepulveda Fire Road. No doubt such fire roads are crucial to firefighting efforts in the steep terrain surrounding Bel-Air's pricey real estate. On Nov. 6, 1961, a wind-driven wildfire destroyed about $24 million worth of homes, an extraordinary figure for that time.
Getty View Trail delivers on the promise of its name from the southern end of the fire road. Other views from the ridge-hugging fire road include the Santa Monica Mountains, the San Gabriel Mountains, the Wilshire corridor and the Pacific Ocean.
Panoramic views the trail delivers; peace it does not. Given the path's proximity to the freeway, tranquillity would be too much to ask of this trail, so don't. At times, the traffic noise is more intense than anything you experience as a motorist in the lanes below.
