The mountain lion tracks were fresh, no more than a day old, cut clean and deep into the wet ridge top of the Verdugo Mountains. The tracks intersected those left by a mule deer, whose teardrop-shaped hoof prints suddenly bolted from a walk into a sprint as both sets of tracks vanished into the chaparral, the cat in pursuit of its favorite prey.
This damp soil was rich in wildlife clues. Bobcat, gray fox, coyote and brush rabbit tracks outnumbered those left by humans. Distance from the center of Los Angeles: 12 miles.
The Verdugos are the forgotten mountains of Greater Los Angeles. On some road maps they appear as an unidentified smudge of brown. A geological orphan, only 10 miles long by about three miles wide, the Verdugos straddle the eastern San Fernando Valley from the Big Tujunga Wash across Burbank to Glendale.
Yet at their summit the Verdugos are the equivalent in elevation of a 100-story skyscraper set atop the highest point in Griffith Park, and with their sparse human traffic, the Verdugos offer a private porch for overlooking the metropolis while immersed in nature.
On a recent afternoon, mountain bikers Rick Burghart and Ron Grubbs made the heaving ascent to the 3,126-foot summit and took in the view. Down below, Griffith Park looked like a bump in the road and the Silver Lake reservoir was so far beneath their feet it looked like a turquoise water dish left out for a cat.
To the southeast, Mt. San Jacinto rose in the sky near Palm Springs. Out to sea, San Nicolas Island was visible 45 miles beyond Catalina, while oil tankers off Long Beach moved as slowly as logs floating on a pond.
Burghart, who recently discovered this getaway perch, got off his bike and proclaimed the obvious: "Look at that view--is that awesome?" They began pumping their way down the mountain, figuring that with luck they could make it to work at the Disney Channel in Burbank in less than an hour. "You can see the building from here!" Burghart yelped.
"It's a mysterious range," said geologist Helmut Ehrenspeck, a German native who has been mapping California mountains during the past decade for the Dibblee Foundation in Goleta. "Right in the middle of all this humanity is this incredibly remote mountain. Almost anywhere up there you hear distant freeway sounds, sounds of human activity. But you are totally removed from it.
"It's wonderful, splendid isolation. The Verdugos seem dark and impenetrable."
Mountain Range Largely Unspoiled
The Verdugos are dwarfed by, and sandwiched between, two much larger mountain ranges. In the early morning light, the plum-blue Verdugos are sometimes mistaken for a fragment of the massive San Gabriels, which cover 2,000 square miles with a peak, Old Baldy, that reaches 10,064 feet. To the south stand the 52-mile long Santa Monica Mountains, a major recreation center where some trails are so choked with traffic that mountain bikers complain that they must use hand signals before making a turn.
Even surrounded by a population of millions, the Verdugos remain so lonely that it's possible to hike up to the summit and back in four hours and not see another human being.
Ron Harlan, head of the biology department at Glendale Community College, moved here 20 years ago and was stunned by his discovery of the range. "I didn't think anything like this existed in Los Angeles," he said.
Harlan has taken classes into the Verdugos for an instant escape into the wilderness. "You have what is almost like a federally protected forest that has survived human urban growth all around it. It's like an undiscovered Atlantis."
By a mix of luck, steep terrain and because the Verdugos overlap the cities of Los Angeles, Burbank and Glendale plus scattered private landowners, there has never been a concerted effort to turn this into a major recreational center. They are too small for a ski resort, but too big and rugged, at least so far, for a massive housing development. Environmentalists are fighting to keep it that way by trying to block a proposed 572-luxury home project on the eastern slope in Glendale.
The Verdugos offer no mountaintop campgrounds to lure visitors, and it almost takes local knowledge to find the rare trail heads, which are hidden in residential neighborhoods that encircle the base of the mountains. Anyone who actually does begin a climb is completely on their own because the few dirt trails are completely unmarked.
George Contreras, with the U.S. Geological Survey, has hiked the Verdugos since he was 10. "I like to say the Verdugos are one of our best-kept secrets," he said. "You can go up and picture everything like it was 100 years ago."
Actually, except for the absence of grizzly bears, the wildlife in the Verdugos is much as it was 200 years ago, when the entire mountain range belonged to a corporal in the army of New Spain named Jose Maria Verdugo.
