Verdugo Mountains

Part of the lure of the Verdugos is a chance to lose yourself in the isolation of the mountain range. That happened to me on my second trip up, when I got lost at sunset. My first hike was a time-stopping discovery of wildlife, though I was startled by the mountain lion tracks. Biologists laugh at urbanites who worry about mountain lion attacks, because those incidents are rare. But on my next hike I went armed with my son's aluminum baseball bat.

A 72-year-old pedestrian was struck and killed in a busy Shadow Hills intersection by a hit-and-run driver, police said Friday. Jose Trinidad Manriquez-Gonzalez of Sun Valley died about 6 p.m. Thursday in the 8900 block of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, police said. Witnesses told officers that the driver of a Nissan 200 SX struck the victim while trying pass other southbound vehicles. Moments later, the driver struck a parked car on nearby Wicks Street, abandoned the car and ran.

The Verdugos, a 10-mile stretch of mountains on the northern edge of the Los Angeles Basin where coyotes, rabbits and lizards thrive in thick chaparral, has largely been spared the development that's grown up around it. Residents clustered around La Tuna Canyon Road like it just fine that way. Developer Rick Percell thinks there's room for more, though, and his plan to develop one of the last large swaths of private land in the otherwise wild area has residents upset.

Low winds and steady help from water-dropping aircraft allowed firefighters to gain the upper hand on a stubborn brush fire that burned for a second day along the steep slopes of the Verdugo Mountains above Glendale, fire officials said Tuesday. "The fire isn't heading anywhere," Glendale Fire Capt. Thomas Marchant said. "It's just a matter of getting around what's burning at this point."

Hundreds of residents of Glendale and neighboring communities turned out Wednesday evening to weigh in on Oakmont V, a hillside development that proposes to build up to 572 upscale homes in the Verdugo Mountains. The hearing at Glendale Civic Auditorium was held as part of the public review process for a revised environmental impact report on the Oakmont project. Glendale City Council members ordered the revision because they deemed the initial report to be incomplete.

A brush fire swept across the Verdugo Mountains above Glendale and Burbank on Monday, charring 800 acres and prompting evacuations of dozens of homes, authorities said. There were no injuries and no homes were damaged, fire officials said. But the blaze, of undetermined origin, was only 20% contained by 8 p.m. For a while, a column of dark smoke was visible from miles away.

Thanks to the help of four Glendale volunteers, a group of seedlings in the Verdugo Mountains have a better chance to survive. Part-time naturalist Dave Moreno and three Glendale residents carried five-gallon water bottles up and down a mountain for almost three hours Saturday morning as part of a program to maintain the trees that were planted after a fire in 2005. The bimonthly tree maintenance, spearheaded by Moreno, has been underway for three years now. But the project, he says, is an extension of a more than 50-year-old experiment to introduce nonnative, but noninvasive, tree species to those mountains.

The final battle is nearing in Glendale over a 572-home development in the Verdugo Mountains above Oakmont County Club. On one side, an army of conservationists, environmentalists and some homeowners are passing out fliers, decorating lawns with anti-growth signs and firing off rallying e-mails. The other camp is made up of other homeowners, home seekers and developers.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Justin Ryan Jones left a party on a Wilshire Boulevard rooftop carrying two things: a large white laundry bag overflowing with camp supplies and a bright yellow Creamsicle, which was leaving its sticky mark across his cheeks. Justin, who is 9, was thrilled about the Creamsicle. His mother was much more thrilled by the bag.

Ambitious plans to chisel 572 lots out of the verdant Verdugo Mountains for luxury homes has turned the word "Glendale" into a verb. Conservationists in hillside communities throughout the county now like to say: "We don't want to 'Glendale' Duarte." Or "We don't want to 'Glendale' Sierra Madre." It's this new verb usage, said Marc Stirdivant, who leads a group opposed to the Glendale housing development, that succinctly explains the crux of the long battle to stop the plan.