![]() ![]() Temescal Peak was my first (and only) true summit of the hike. The terrain was narrow in parts, but solid, although some sections were very overgrown with grasses and plants from the recent rain. The flats in between ascents were a welcome reprieve. I had to remind myself that this was normal–I just wasn’t used to the weight–and keep walking. I was only 2 miles into a 70 mile trek and already struggling. It had been a while since I’d gone on a backpacking trip, so the weight was definitely affecting my speed and as I reached the first “summit” of my hike, after a site called “the bridge,” my thoughts were a chorus of, “What did I get myself into?” Because of this, I was unaware that my warm up for my thru hike would be a pretty immediate ascent from the Terminus until Temescal Ridge. Since there is no BBT guidebook, I knew mileages and campsites along my WeBo route, but my knowledge of elevation gains and terrain was super limited. I started at the Eastern Terminus and was officially heading Westbound (WeBo?). The trail spans the Santa Monica Mountains from Will Rogers State Historic Park (Eastern Terminus) to Point Mugu State Park (Western Terminus). While people do thru-hike the BBT, there is very little information on doing it in its entirety online, and there is no official guidebook, so starting out that morning, I only had a vague idea of what to expect. I grew up in the Santa Monica Mountains, so hiking this trail all the way through had been a dream of mine since I fell in love with hiking in my early twenties. Stay tuned for a possible National Recreation Trail designation in the months to come.On February 6, I set out to start my 70-mile thru-hike of Southern California’s Backbone Trail (BBT). With the finishing touches being completed in the summer of 2016, the trail is now completely connected from end to end, stretching an uninterrupted ~67 miles through breathtaking coastal California scenes. For example, biking is limited to fire roads and is not permitted on singletrack trails-unless that trail is sanctioned and signed for bikes. ![]() Only the most recently built sections have been created to modern trail standards.īecause of this trail-stitching process, some sections have different names and not every section is open to each user. Sections of the trail were old animal paths that turned into singletrack trails other segments were adopted fire roads. It has been constructed by volunteers, the California Conservation Corps, and professional staff from various parkland agencies. Like Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, the Backbone Trail System has grown inch by inch across a collage of public lands. It climbed ridges, cut across chaparral-covered hillsides, dove into oak woodlands, and forded creeks and valleys. By 1990, 43 miles of the trail had been completed. The Backbone Trail would connect from Will Rogers State Historic Park to Point Mugu, heading right through the middle of Malibu Creek State Park.ĭuring the 1980s, a number of supporters began to work on the project with California State Parks, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, and the National Park Service. ![]() In the 1970s, with the start of state parks in the mountains, the idea began to gain momentum. Originally, it was set to stretch between Griffith Park to Point Mugu, but that concept never came to fruition. A Santa Monica Mountains ridgeline trail has been a goal for more than 50 years. ![]()
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