8 NOVEMBER 2020 W6/CT-037
Cahuenga is one of the few surviving Tongva place names we have in southern California. My last trip to the summit was February 20th 1984. Once again, I left before dawn figuring it would be pretty crowded later on a nice clear Sunday after the rain. This was my third activation in as many days. I was on a roll.
My friend Brian WA6JFK had activated this summit recently and he told me where to park. When I got to Lake Hollywood Drive I discovered there are parking restriction before 6 AM that forced me to park a mile further away and add over 200′ to the climb.
The after 6AM hike is short and steep – 1.25 miles and about 800′ of gain up a deeply eroded trail. When I hiked up Cahuenga Peak 36 years ago, we came in from the east on the Mt. Lee access road. A longer hike with less elevation gain.
Cahuenga Peak offers a tremendous view of downtown Los Angeles, Century City, Westwood and Santa Monica. It was still pretty cloudy at first from yesterday’s rain, but soon the sun broke through and cast glorious rays of light over Los Angeles and Glendale.
Brian WA6JFK was over on CT-150 and we had armchair summit-to-summit copy. We both tag-teamed a bunch of contacts on 2m. My furthest contact was with KN6JPZ in Ramona. We also both worked K6RIN over on Oat Mountain for another summit-to-summit.
There were surprisingly few people on the trail down and I discovered a LA Parks & Rec ranger at the road head. He told me that the area was closed. I was pretty surprised to hear that as it had just rained and everywhere else in the Santa Monica Mountains was open as far as I knew. Anyway, he was very nice about it and let me go with a warning.
KG6MZS 
