Hiking

IT'S NEARLY NOON, AND THE MORNING'S HIKERS scramble out of the baking inner canyon, wheezing and dripping. In a room a few hundred yards from the South Rim, supervising ranger Marc Yeston touches a green pen to a wall map and traces a long, wriggling path. Then he makes a triangle. Here, he says, is the spot where they found Margaret Bradley, a 24-year-old University of Chicago medical student and marathoner.

WASHINGTON - The Congressional Budget Office warned that the country could be thrown into a recession if Congress tries to reduce the nation's deficit quickly with a combination of budget cuts and higher taxes scheduled to take place at the end of the year. The nonpartisan budget office laid out the stark choices Tuesday over what has been called the coming fiscal cliff as congressional leaders square off in an expected partisan showdown from now through December. The office warned that the growth of the nation's gross domestic product - the value of goods and services produced - would slow to just 0.5% next year if Congress did nothing.

Few trails traverse the rugged Santa Lucia Wilderness, an isolated, little-traveled part of the southern Santa Lucia Mountains in San Luis Obispo County. Perhaps the most enjoyable of pathways is Big Falls, which delivers the destination promised by its name, along with a couple of fine swimming holes and a lush, shaded canyon. Big Falls, paired with its cascading little cousin, Little Falls, adds up to wet and wild adventure. Getting to the falls can be an adventure in itself.

University of California regents Wednesday discussed the possibility of a 6% tuition increase for next fall but pledged that they would lobby hard to avoid such a $732-per-student hike. With such money worries rippling through the 10-campus system, the regents approved the hiring of a new chancellor for UC San Diego at a $411,084 salary, which is 4.8% higher than his predecessor, Marye Anne Fox. In addition, Pradeep Khosla, now the engineering dean at Carnegie Mellon University, will receive a relocation bonus of nearly $24,700 annually for his first four years.

Our first sign that this was no Sunday stroll to Bearpaw Meadow came about two miles up the High Sierra trail, where I had stopped to figure our position on a topo map. (It was in response to an "Are we there yet?" query from my teenage daughter.) A couple heading in the opposite direction stopped to chat. "Heading up to Bearpaw? You'll love it." And they laughed when asked how much farther it was. We had miles and miles to go before we slept that night: 11.3 to be exact.

Chances are, if you run across a little old lady dressed in purple spandex and leading a saddled goat any time soon, she'll probably be in front of you. Sandra Johnson, a 66-year-old South Pasadena woman, is undertaking the monumental task of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, from Mexico to Canada, for the second time. A trail junkie, the grandmother of three long ago forfeited her job and home to heed the call of the wild.

3 On our third date, Alison made me lasagna and a German chocolate cake. We stayed up talking till dawn. Three kids and 30 years later, the idea of staying up all night, talking for hours on end, seems like a fantasy. And, maybe, a fantasy you wouldn't mind having again. So here's a cheap date that allows a lot of time for talk -- unrushed, unscripted, unvarnished -- and is a bit more age-appropriate for those who aren't kids anymore: breakfast and a hike. Start with the breakfast.

HIDING within the concrete and stucco of our great megalopolis is a parallel universe -- a place where transit arteries are not clogged, passersby don't avert their eyes, billboards are ocean vistas and the hovering aircraft are hawks, not helicopters. You can find this refuge on the vast network of trails that crisscrosses the mountains and canyons of Southern California.

Hiking trails are good for more than a challenging outdoor walk. The uneven terrain forces the body to use more stabilizing muscles in the abdominals and back, which improves balance and strengthens the core. Sprints or walking fast uphill puts you into an anaerobic zone, which taxes the muscles and benefits the cardiovascular system. We took to some trails near Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the San Gabriel Mountains foothills with Keli Roberts ( www.keliroberts.

Re "A Few 'Squeaky Wheels' on Our Shared Trails," letter, Sept. 24: While hiking on trails in the Santa Monica Mountains, for over 20 years, I have never feared the approach of an oncoming hiker, but I have feared the approach of fast bicycles. Willis Simms Woodland Hills

SACRAMENTO - Jerry Brown told voters he was different - that only he, a septuagenarian government veteran with no aspirations to higher office, could fix the cycle of swelling budget deficits that has plagued California for more than a decade. But the release of Brown's updated budget plan Monday shows that he is being trapped by the same partisanship and dysfunction that hobbled his predecessors when they tried to repair the state's finances. "No governor, under the system we have in California, really has the ability to deal with the mess we've created," said Mark Paul, a former deputy state treasurer and the coauthor of a book about the state's financial quandary.

In March, when I wrote that the tax increase proposals by Gov. Jerry Brown and civil rights attorney Molly Munger were unimaginative if not doomed, I got an email from Munger. She did not agree, at least with regard to her initiative. "Unimaginative?" she wrote, inviting me to meet with her. This week, I decided to take her up on her offer after watching Brown admit that the financial mess he told us about in January was nothing compared to the mess we're in now. Frankly, I don't know how the January estimates were so far off the mark, with a $9-billion hole turning into a $16-billion hole in less time than it takes to grow tomatoes.

Gov. Jerry Brown's May budget revision leaves blood all over the Capitol walls. The era when California governors could make their cuts with a scalpel ended before Brown took office, so he does his trimming with a chain saw. The results are cuts in Medi-Cal payments to hospitals and nursing homes, cuts to those who care for the disabled, cuts to state courts and cuts in hours and pay for state employees. So far schools have been largely spared from this grisly exercise, but that will probably change in November if voters fail to approve a tax-hike initiative.

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Jerry Brown released a plan to close California's rapidly growing deficit by switching state offices to a four-day week, slashing welfare benefits and healthcare for the poor and relying on a variety of short-term fixes - all in the hopes that voters will give the state some breathing room by raising taxes in November. The governor, who unveiled his revised budget proposal in the Capitol on Monday, is facing a nearly $16-billion budget gap, far larger than the $9.2 billion he predicted in January.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown warned Californians on Thursday to brace for another round of difficult budget cuts as he hand-delivered boxes of petitions to election officials requesting that his proposed tax hike be placed on the November ballot. Brown, who is expected to unveil his revised budget proposal Monday, said he needed far more than the $4.2 billion in spending reductions he asked for in January. And he continued to raise the specter of even deeper wounds to public schools, colleges and other state services if his bid for tax hikes fails.

Several high-profile business names, such as San Francisco hedge-fund manager Thomas Steyer and agribusiness magnate Stewart Resnick, have contributed to a proposed ballot measure seeking tighter regulation of health insurance rates, according to campaign finance records. These contributions were among $1.5 million in donations reported Monday to the California Secretary of State by Consumer Watchdog, the Santa Monica group leading the ballot drive. A coalition of insurers, hospitals, doctors and business groups opposing the measure has reported $367,200 in donations.

Regarding "Hidden Canyon Offers Cascades, Ocean Views" (Hiking, March 8), here's some of what author John McKinney "forgot": Escondido Canyon Trail is shared with horses--this means "road apples" and traffic problems. It is also under a segment of the approach path to LAX. His "handsome grotto" has stinky, stagnant water. You park a mile from the trail head and walk on a paved, well-used road with "No Parking" signs because the rich residents don't want hiking scum trashing up their high-priced enclave--understandable, but not a "good vibe."

Re "Oh, C'mon, Get Over Yourself" [Nov. 15]: I am a Sierra Club hike leader and somewhat chunky myself. Nevertheless, I have taken up walking half-marathons. I have seen many very large women finish the half, and probably some also do a full marathon. So a hefty woman can be quite strong and healthy! SHEILA ANDERSON Oak View

EVENT At Hike for the Homeless, participants will stroll through sylvan Griffith Park to raise money and awareness for a less placid problem – the ongoing homelessness crisis in L.A. Proceeds form the second annual event benefit will benefit the Society of St Vincent de Paul's Cardinal Manning Center, a Skid Row shelter. Griffith Park, 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, L.A. L.A. 8:30 a.m. Sat. $30. hike4thehomeless.com

Susan Kang Schroeder ticked off the facts of the case: A man bought a 5-year-old girl from Vietnam, used her as a sex slave for more than a decade and forced her to invite over friends whom he molested during sleepovers. "She was made to do every possible sex act," Schroeder said with a bluntness she honed as a prosecutor. But this wasn't a jury. It was the seven members of the Huntington Beach City Council. And if the aim of the Orange County district attorney's chief of staff was to grab their attention with the story of one of the county's most notorious pedophiles, it worked.