Author: Rachel Glegg

If you’re at CicLAvia today, drop by our trail work information pop-up booth! It’s located at Beethoven St. and Venice Blvd. We’re here today representing a pair of organizations which, together, provide the backbone of the volunteer workforce that maintains the trails you love to hike/run/ride in the Santa Monica Mountains.

That is, the Santa Monica Mountains Task Force of the Sierra Club (SMMTF), the Santa Monica Mountains Trails Council (SMMTC).

Our volunteers will be stationed on the route from 9 am until 4 pm, and are ready to answer any questions you might have about getting involved in trail work and land stewardship in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Santa Monica Mountains Trail Days

Our two groups, along with a third, the Concerned Off-Road Bicyclists Association (CORBA), form the organizing committee of Santa Monica Mountains Trail Days which takes place each year in April.

Now running for over 40 years, Trail Days is a fun weekend for individuals, families, and groups to give back to the parks by helping maintain trails. We invited people who participated in April 2025 to upload their favorite photos to our shared album.

Trail Days 2026 will be on April 17-19 (Fri-Sun). Save the date! Registration opens on February 1.

Meet the volunteers!

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Sierra Club’s Santa Monica Mountains Task Force

Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. The Santa Monica Mountains Task Force was formed in 1972 as a sub-committee of the Angeles Chapter to protect the Santa Monica Mountains from over-development and maintain open space for future generations. In 1978, Ron Webster formed a volunteer trail crew under the Task Force, and went on to align and build a great many trails in the Santa Monica Mountains and adjacent parkland.

Volunteer with Sierra Club

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Santa Monica Mountains Trails Council

The Santa Monica Mountains Trails Council (SMMTC), a volunteer nonprofit organization, is dedicated to establishing, preserving and maintaining the public trail system throughout the Santa Monica Mountains and adjacent areas through education, advocacy and partnership with public and private sectors.

Volunteer with Trails Council

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Concerned Off-Road Bicyclists Association

The Concerned Off-Road Bicyclists Association (CORBA) is a chapter of the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA). They are an all-volunteer non-profit organization serving the mountain bicycling community of Los Angeles and its surrounding areas including southern Ventura County. They are dedicated to preserving open space, maintaining access to public lands, and creating more trail opportunities for all to enjoy.

Volunteer with CORBA

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It takes our full community to care for public lands. Volunteers and partner organizations contribute so much to keeping California’s State Parks system healthy, beautiful, and rich in biodiversity!

Join the Trailies on Saturday, June 14th for an Intro to Trail Maintenance at Topanga State Park, taking place during CA State Parks Week, and discover how you can help to protect and steward our State Parks as a volunteer with the Sierra Club.

We’ll be cleaning up trails at Trippet Ranch from 8:30 am until about 12:30 pm, and then head down to the oak-shaded picnic area outside the skeet lodge (near the Trippet parking lot) for lunch. The work will include vegetation clearance, removal of invasive plants, and minor trail tread repairs. Participants will receive lunch and a complimentary gift.

Registration is required.

Trails that have been closed since January 2025 are gradually reopening in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Several parks and trails managed by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) have been reopened to public use in the past week, with a few notable exceptions. An amended order of closure was posted on Friday, along with an update on MRCA’s Instagram.

In March, we joined forces with the SMMTC and CORBA trail crews to help CA State Parks with post-fire trail restoration work on the north side of Topanga SP. There was a huge turnout for these events, and our volunteers did great work! Together we made repairs to the fire-damaged Gizmo Trail, with a second team simultaneously working nearby on the Rita Walters Trail, outside the burn perimeter.

State Parks program managers have outlined the next phase of reopening of roads and trails in Topanga State Park, and, if there are no ongoing concerns after a final review, they’re looking to reopen Eagle Rock Fire Road, Eagle Springs Fire Road, and Fire Road #30 to the Hub Junction in the next couple of weeks—once DWP has completed their work on the power lines, and cleared their equipment from the roads.

They wish to reopen Garapito Trail at the same time, which makes a really nice loop hike when combined with those roads. Getting Garapito ready for reopening is currently the #1 priority for the Sierra Club trail crew and our partners!

Subscribe to our mailing list to volunteer with us.

Check the Topanga SP webpage for news, as this will invariably be the first source of official announcements about CA State Parks trails reopening and extended closures.

East Topanga Fire Road to Parker Mesa from Trippet Ranch is also poised to reopen in the coming weeks, but we expect there will be a longer-term closure beyond the Parker Mesa junction to avoid feeding the public into the Palisades closure areas.

Los Liones Trail had only minimal damages. The State Parks crew went in in March and cleared all the burned vegetation, removed landslides, and widened the trail bench. However, with the trail still closed and lack of foot traffic through springtime, it’s probably growing in very quickly and may well need some additional rehab.

Work on Santa Ynez Canyon Trail is tentatively set to begin in late June, depending on access.

Will Rogers State Historic Park is closed until further notice while the park is supporting the clean-up effort. Staff have been working to get the trails into shape, ready to reopen when the time comes. They’ve finished cleaning up all the day-use trails, as far as removing obstructions. They’re currently doing finish-work, and rebuilding structures like retaining walls and small bridges.

Rogers Road—the Backbone Trail section between Will Rogers and the Hub Junction, which includes the Chicken Ridge—remains closed indefinitely.

Check the Will Rogers SHP webpage for official updates.

-Rachel G.

P.S. On Saturday 6/14, we will be hosting another Intro to Trail Maintenance event for California State Parks Week. Subscribe to our mailing list to receive details.

Join Parks California for an Instagram Live interview on Tuesday, April 8th, at noon, and an in-depth look at resilience in the aftermath of the Palisades Fire.

The chat will feature colleagues from the Wildfire and Forest Resilience program, and CA State Parks staff members including Senior Environmental Scientists Lisa Andreano and Brooke Sheridan, and Forester I Azalie (Oz) Welsh.

These team members had to tap into their training quickly as they faced the destructive Palisades Fire in January. We’ll hear how they took action to help firefighters minimize the effects of fire on archaeological sites, rare plants, endangered species, tribal assets and wilderness areas.

This Saturday, 3/22/2025, our trail crew will be working on TWO trails on the north side of Topanga SP (via Reseda Blvd). Registration is required.

As well as making repairs to the fire-damaged Gizmo Trail, we’ll carry out routine brush maintenance on the nearby Rita Walters Trail, which is closer to the trailhead and outside the burn perimeter.

We will split into several work parties, jointly-led by Sierra Club and Santa Monica Mountains Trails Council crew leaders. No experience is necessary to participate in trail work with us. Volunteers will receive one-to-one training and support from our seasoned crew leaders. We also provide the tools.

Below, you can read about each project/site: the nature of the work, tools we might be using, what to bring, etc. There will be tasks suited to most levels of physical ability, so whether you’d prefer lighter tasks like clipping overgrown vegetation, or working with picks, shovels and big rocks, there will be plenty for everyone to do!

Spaces are limited. This will be our first trail repair event following the Palisades Fire, and many more opportunities to volunteer will be posted in the coming weeks.

If you have any questions, please email the Volunteer Coordinator, or reach out to any of the leaders listed below.

Event schedule

We will meet at the Top of Reseda at 8:30 am. The park is currently closed to the public and a security guard will be posted at the entrance gate, but they are expecting us. Watch out for the stop sign camera near the top of the hill to avoid getting a ticket.

On arrival, please visit the sign-in station first!

Participants will sign two liability waivers: one for Sierra Club and the other for CA State Parks. Then we will verify your preferences for tools/tasks, and assign you a work site and crew leader. There will be hot coffee and snacks when you get there, and the bathrooms at our meeting location should be open.

Please stay close by, as there will be some very important announcements made before we move out to the work sites in groups.

By 12:30 pm, all crews will have wrapped up work and returned to the meeting spot, where ice-cold refreshments will be waiting for us.

About the work

Rita Walters Trail:

The better choice if you would prefer lighter tasks, access to the amenities, or want to stay out of the burn area. This trail begins right at our meeting spot, and is just 0.3 miles long with a very gentle climb, making for a pleasant bypass to the steep fire road that leads into the park.

Light to moderate work. The predominant task will be brushing: ie. removal of overgrown vegetation from the travel way. We’ll also clear any accumulated silt and vegetation from drains, and remove plant debris that was pushed onto the trail from the roadway above during the fire response. Some commonly used tools are loppers, shears, small saws, McLeod hoes, and rakes.

Gizmo Trail:

This is specifically post-fire restoration work. Moderate to heavy labor. Our goal is to reestablish the trail’s original construction standards. The absence of vegetation gives us a rare opportunity to fix known problem spots and improve drainage. Tools used might include McLeods, picks, shovels, buckets, rock bars, rock slings.

Directions

Meeting location: Top of Reseda Trailhead

Address for GPS: 3539 Reseda Blvd #3619, Tarzana, CA 91356

From US-101 – Exit at Reseda Blvd, and drive south on Reseda for about 15 min, up the hill and into Marvin Braude Mulholland Gateway Park. Don’t forget about the stop sign camera!

Bring with you…

• Robust footwear with a closed toe (hiking shoes are ideal)
• Long-sleeve shirt and long pants that you don’t mind getting dirty
• Warm top layer
• Sun protection: hat, sunglasses, sunscreen
• Plenty of water to drink (min. 2 liters recommended)
• Snacks / lunch to eat in the field
• Day-pack to carry your belongings
• Reusable coffee cup (optional)

Bring your own work gloves and eye protection if you have them. We have extras to loan.

Weather

National Weather Service forecast for Reseda

Steady rain cancels.

Event day contacts

Sierra Club Outing Leaders:
Rachel Glegg – (310) 985-2826 – rachel.dorman@gmail.com
Bill Vanderberg – (310) 245-2763 – bill.vanderberg@ca.rr.com
John Skidmore – (310) 490-2304 – skidss1@gmail.com

Trail Crew Leaders:
Bill Pitts
Jeremy Small
Dave Edwards