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How to find the shadiest hikes around L.A.

julho 24, 2025

My plan for today’s Wild was to write about three shady hikes near L.A. where you could escape the summer heat.

But last week, as I was busily researching via mapping technology about slope angles, sun exposure and the elevation of various canyon walls near L.A., an editor, observing my fury, suggested I zoom out and teach Wilders how to find their own shady hikes.

This week, you get to peek behind the curtain and learn about some of the tools I use to find the best hikes around L.A.

My goal in writing this is to empower you to find hikes near you that you didn’t realize provided good shade at various times of the day. Lists of hikes are great, as they introduce you to new adventures. But sometimes reaching those hikes involves a long drive when, in actuality, there‘s a great trail waiting for you basically in your backyard.

Griffith Park is a great place to hike and learn how the sun and shade move throughout the day.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

To find a shady hike, you need to consider a few factors:
☀️ Time of day (and year)
📈 The day’s forecast
⛰️ Local topography
🌳 Tree cover

Before we dive in, I want to note: Sometimes it really is too hot to hike. Please use your best judgment when heading out and, as the temperature creeps up, remember to drink more water than usual.

OK, let’s find our next adventure!

Sun set falling behind a hill near Griffith Park silhouetting a lone tree.

🌅 Time of day (and year)🌇

Let’s say we’d like to find the best time and place to hike at Griffith Park this Saturday without getting up before 7 a.m. or burning our faces off from the sun. (Kudos to the the 5 a.m. Crew. Your faces are always safe from the burn.)

Sun peeking through trees on a shaded path through the woods.

This Saturday, the sun in L.A. will rise at 6 a.m., according to data compiled by the Griffith Park Observatory. But where will the sun rise, and how does that help us discern where the shade will be in the morning? (Yes, the sun always rises in the east, but we’re about to get way more specific!)

To figure that out, I’d like you to grab your cell phone and open your phone’s compass app. With the app still open, set your phone on a flat surface parallel to the ground. Your compass app should have a number next to the direction it is facing. For example, my iPhone’s compass app is showing 59 degrees northeast right now. This number is your compass bearing, which is a precise way to describe a direction.

Now, slowly rotate your phone until it reads 66 degrees northeast. That, my friends, is the exact direction the sun will rise this weekend, according to Griffith Observatory’s website.

Why does this bearing point matter? Because the direction the sun rises from will help you discern where the shade will be.

Overlook of multiple hills with various shade coverage.

🌄Local topography🌄

Back to our example. We want to hike Saturday morning in Griffith Park. Since the sun rises northeast of the park this time of year, that means that the earliest rays will shine onto the northeast-facing slopes.

Stone wall next to trail casting shade onto the path.

This includes trails near the Merry-Go-Round, including the Old Zoo Loop, and the Mineral Wells and Bill Eckert trails, along with the area near Amir’s Garden, where the sun will be shining by 6:30 a.m. (Again, this doesn’t mean trees won’t provide you with shade.)

Meanwhile, hikes along southern and southwestern-facing slopes are more likely to be shady, including Fern Dell and trails near the bird sanctuary where a nearby west-facing slope blocks the morning sun.

For a visual, take a look at this map I made focused on sun exposure in Griffith Park at 8 a.m. with bearing lines pointing to the directions of the sunrise and sunset.

You’ll see much of the map covered in yellow, which represents sun exposure, while purple patches remain on the south and southwestern sides of slopes where there will be shade at 8 a.m. By 9 a.m., those patches start to shrink, although the map is only taking into consideration the angles of the slopes and not whether these paths have tree cover.

Shaded path lined with shrubs headed toward a glowing hillside.

☀️The day’s forecast🌥️

OK, we’ve learned about the direction of the sunrise and a bit about local topography. Let’s dive a little deeper.

Let’s plan a hike to Angeles National Forest, somewhere that starts above 5,000 feet elevation. Why? Because this cooler-than-average July will not last forever (sad), and we’ll need to escape to higher elevation soon.

Let’s say it’s going to be a hot day in L.A., and you’d like to hike in the San Gabriel Mountains in a hopefully less hot area. (Also, for the purpose of our example, there’s no strong inversion layer, which can create a scenario where it’s hotter in the mountains than it is in L.A.)

Semi-shaded trail through shrubs and hills.

The plan is to arrive by 8 a.m. to the trailhead. Where can we find a shady reprieve along with hopefully a lower temperature?

First, it will depend on how high we go. “In general, for every 1,000 feet you ascend, the temperature drops approximately 3.5 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit. This predictable temperature decrease is known as the lapse rate,” as this HowStuffWorks article points out.

The amount the temperature drops, though, will vary depending on the weather, humidity and time of day.

I usually start to notice a temperature drop in Angeles National Forest once I travel beyond 5,000 feet. For example, I’ve found on a hot day the parking area at Mt. Wilson might be 10 to 15 degrees cooler than L.A. The Buckhorn Campground, which sits at about 6,500 feet elevation, and the nearby Burkhart Trail are my other go-tos on hot days. You can find the elevation of the hike you’re considering by using Google Maps’ terrain function or by finding your hike on CalTopo, right clicking and choosing the “point information” option.

But how do we find a shady spot at a higher elevation in Angeles National Forest?

Overlook of mountains and hills with a variety of cloud and shade cover.

For one, we need to consider the direction that a slope faces. I must admit: Figuring out the direction a slope faces broke my brain. I am a bit directionally challenged (a great attribute for an outdoors journalist!). That’s to say if this feels confusing or a bit heady, I understand.

The simplest way to understand the direction a slope faces, or its aspect, and thus how much sun it will get is this: A slope’s direction is the cardinal direction in which it slopes downward.

For our purposes, we’re looking for north-facing slopes because those get less direct sunlight. Why? Here in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun is always to our south, never directly overhead, as it travels across the sky. (Thank you to Mt. Wilson telescope operator and volunteer Nicholas Arkimovich for explaining this and more to me.)

North-facing slopes with trails through them include the Mt. Waterman hike and Mt. Baden-Powell via Vincent Gap. I’ve also found nice shade on the Rim Trail at Mt. Wilson, a path that descends a north-facing slope to Newcomb Pass.

🌲Tree cover 🌳

Lastly, as mentioned, tree cover plays a huge role in temperature, given we have a dry heat here in Southern California. The type of tree cover you’ll find will vary widely among the San Gabriel and Santa Monica mountains, as these ranges feature robust and different plant communities depending, in part, on elevation and a slope’s direction (and thus sun exposure). I could probably write a series of Wilds about this topic (maybe an entire book). In short: Oak woodlands, areas around rivers and higher elevations with tall pine trees will provide you with great shade.

I know this was a lot of information, but I hope today’s Wild will be something you can repeatedly come back to when planning your summer hikes.

If you’d like a little homework, take a look at the map and look for canyons near you. Do they run north-south or east-west? Is one canyon’s wall taller than the other? How does that affect how much shade the canyon floor will get? And is there a trail leading through the canyon, waiting for you to explore it?

Let me know how it goes! I love hearing from you.

3 things to do

A wigeon, small duck, sitting around the Madrona Marsh.

1. Bend the curve for birds in Torrance
Keith Haney, a biologist and California naturalist, will present “Bending the Curve with Audubon” at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Madrona Marsh Preserve and Nature Center in Torrance. Haney will explain how the Audubon Society is addressing the downward trend in bird populations and how residents can help locally. Register at eventbrite.com.

2. Meander past murals in East L.A.
People for Mobility Justice will host an art-focused bike ride at 9 a.m. Saturday through East L.A. and Boyle Heights. Riders will start at Mariachi Plaza and ride together to murals in the area. Beginner riders are welcome. Participants should bring a working bike or wheeled device, a helmet, front and back bike lights, reflective clothing and a water bottle. Register at eventbrite.com.

3. Marvel at moths in Valyermo
In celebration of National Moth Week, the Invertebrate Club of Southern California will host a black lighting event from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday at Devil’s Punchbowl Natural Area in Valyermo. The group will set up black lights to observe moths and hike a short distance into the valley to observe scorpions and other invertebrates. Register to learn more.

The must-read

A professional diver looks at the Kaweah River.

Jomarie Calasanz was visiting Sequoia National Park when, seemingly in a flash, she was swept away by the Kaweah River. Her family longed for news — that at the very least, her body could be recovered. But rescuers found the water too treacherous to keep searching. “On the family’s last morning at the hotel, a waitress who had kept her distance out of respect approached (Jomarie’s) grieving mother and gave her a hug and a tip: There’s a local legend, a man not affiliated with official emergency service agencies, who finds people,” Times staff writer Jack Dolan wrote. That man is Juan Heredia, a 53-year-old scuba instructor from Stockton. Over the past year, Heredia has found the bodies of a dozen drowning victims after authorities had either temporarily or fully stopped searching. Heredia has gained a significant following online and has been getting calls from across the world from families pleading for his help. “I think when they call and tell me they have a loved one who has drowned, it opens up a wound in me, too. And then I need closure,” Heredia said. “I can’t stop thinking about them alone in that dark water.”

Stay safe out there, friends.

Happy adventuring,

P.S.

As I was researching this week’s Wild, I called the Mt. Wilson Observatory, as it has a long history of studying the sun (and I had a lot of questions about how the sun moves about). I was greeted by an automated voice prompt: Press 1 for information about visiting the observatory, press 2 to leave a message for the office and “if you’d like to hear an excerpt from the poem ‘The Observatory’ by Alfred Noyes about first light on the 100-inch telescope, press 3.” I pressed 3 and listened for about four minutes to a dramatic reading of a beautiful moment in L.A. space history. “The observatory loomed against the sky; / And the dark mountain with its headlong gulfs, / Had lost all memory of the world below,” a line that reminded me of all the times I’ve escaped to Mt. Wilson on a hot summer day. I politely request more places offer poetry as an option to callers.

For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.

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