Visited Sugar Loaf Hill/Santa Fe Hill
A few weeks ago, I received an email from a reader of this blog, Eliot, telling me to head up a hill next to the 110 to watch a helicopter install power lines in Arroyo Seco. I was unable to go - luckily, I saw cool footage of the installation online later that weekend.
I did want to head up that hill, though! It's got two names - Santa Fe hill, or Sugar Loaf Hill - and it's yet another non-public-park undeveloped hilltop in NELA. And instead of views of downtown, it provides great views of Highland Park, the freeway, and the Arroyo Seco, which is a channelized stream with a bike path inside it. (I wrote about it on Cohost a long time ago, but that post isn't here.)
Eliot told me how to get onto the hill from the southwest. You can park anywhere nearby, then head up to the end of Hardison Way. There, a driveway slopes uphill sharply to the northeast; the spot where the driveway meets the road has a little path leading northwest onto the hillside. Right now it is choked with mustard, but just push through (and wear long pants):
That path heads out to a freeway overlook: a sheer drop where you can see cars rushing past, and get a view down into theArroyo Seco bike path. You can also see down into the Arroyo Seco Tiny Home development, a kind of transitional housing facility that's wedged right between the freeway and a neighboring park. There are a couple lawn chairs hidden in the long grass here, and a table.
If you head back toward the driveway a few yards, you'll find a very steep uphill path leading toward the top of the hill. The views from up there are even better - it's definitely one of those spots where you can kind of linger in the contrast between undeveloped, "wild" land and the overwhelming pressure of urban sounds and vistas. The freeway can be really loud, but you are high, high up above it, above a slope so steep it's very nearly a cliff.
That contrast is the thing I like best about all these hilltop walks - the sense that you are both far away from the city, but also completely swallowed-up by it. You can see everything! You can stand in a micro-scale sagebrush wilderness and point at every neighborhood you recognize, and gesture at the intersections where your favorite food spots probably are, and knit your mental map of the geography together. It's a truly surreal experience. This hilltop is one of the ones where that contrast is most extreme. I liked it a lot.
I saw a lot of cool plants up here, two midday coyotes, and what I think was a red-shouldered hawk (but I could not take a photo of it). The hawk in particular was very cool, since it was flying at basically head-level to us, not too far away from the hilltop. At this height, you are a peer to the hawks hunting in the arroyo, basically.
The strangest thing I saw up here however was human-created. If you explore long enough, you may find a work-in-progress dirt bike jump course.
Some of the jumps are solid packed dirt, but some are more hugelkultur-style. I don't think this is a good idea? Just past the very crunchy ramp pictured below, you'll find a steep, clifflike slope leading down to a train track. If you do this jump wrong - and with a surface like that, it looks hard to do this jump right - you'll be getting the world's most-urban wilderness air rescue.
Heads up, if you are the mysterious person (or people) building this dirt bike course: don't hurt yourself!! Also I found all your tools!! Come get your tools!!! Someone's going to walk away with all your shovels!!! Take care of yourself!!!!
The tension between people's desire to experience nature but also have fun is something I've been fascinated with recently. So many people, given the chance, would choose above all to have a kind of motorized fun in nature. And I know that telling people to not do this shit might come across to some as, like, huge cop energy.
But also: all these hilltops left out here are kind of precious. We only have so many of them. I think we have to be more careful with them than this! If your teen is building a dirt bike jump course on Sugar Loaf Hill, please introduce them to urban road cycling or something. Get them doing some night rides. You can have fun breaking the rules on two wheels (laudable, natural) without also digging giant holes between all the native plants that are barely hanging on over here (antisocial, you'll break your neck and die, nobody will hear you screaming over the freeway noise).
Anyway, I highly recommend giving this one a climb. Thank you to Eliot for telling me about it!!