Hollywood Hills Hike

A few weeks back I signed up (through the Outdoors Club) for a game of ultimate frisbee at Lake Hollywood Park. Everything around here seems to be in a relatively famous area, for example: when I was growing up I played softball at Bayshore Little League - this doesn't have quite the same ring to it as the Beverly Hills Little League, but it really isn't all that different if you think about it. Cities name things (hotels, parks, little leagues) after geographic locations within the city (i.e. Bayshore and Beverly Hills) or after people that are important to the town in some way, it just so happens that the "stars" of Tampa, FL (i.e. H.B. Plant and Bayshore) are relatively unknown in other parts of the country/world whereas the stars of Los Angeles, CA (I don't think you need examples here) are famous everywhere. So it is easy to see how people who live in Los Angeles become desensitized to their surroundings, the wow factor that comes with driving on Sunset Boulevard for the first time declines significantly if you take that road to work everyday. I don't think that this makes them 'too cool', it makes them human - somebody has to live here! That being said, I have not reached that point. I am still tickled by the fact that about 75% of all movies, TV shows, songs and tabloids are talking about, referring to or based around people and places IN MY TOWN. It is awesome. So when I signed up for the game of ultimate frisbee I was not only excited to see if they have heard of 'The Cup' on the west coast, I was excited that I was going to get to spend my Saturday morning driving through the Hollywood Hills (maybe Will Ferrell would be outside getting his morning paper) on my way to Lake Hollywood Park. It turned out that all the stars and starlets were still tucked away in bed that morning but when I finally arrived at the park I got out of my car and found myself looking up at the Hollywood sign! Apparently, I was the only one impressed by this since it was not listed anywhere in the description of the event or in the directions to the park (that would have made finding the place far easier "just drive towards the giant white letters on the hill") and it was only mentioned once in passing throughout the course of the game ("your end-zone is between that trash can and the second "L"). For those of you who don't know, the sign originally read "HOLLYWOODLAND" and its purpose was to advertise a new housing development in the hills above the Hollywood district of Los Angeles. It was erected in 1923 and was not intended to be permanent but after the rise of the American cinema in Los Angeles it became an internationally recognized symbol and was left there. Throughout the years letters have fallen down, been knocked down, deteriorated, etc. The "LAND" portion of the sign was eventually removed to spell "HOLLYWOOD" and reflect the city, not the Hollywoodland housing development. The sign is located on the southern side of Mount Lee in Griffith Park and while there are many good viewpoints of the sign, it is no longer open to the public because it became such a frequent target of pranks and vandalism. Supposedly, in 2000 the LAPD installed a security system featuring motion detection and closed-circuit cameras... approaching the sign any closer than 50 yards activates an alarm and the police are called.

The alarm and the police are a myth as far as I'm concerned. After that game of ultimate frisbee I asked how close you could actually get to the sign (I'm guessing we were about a half mile away) and one of the guys told me that the best way to get there was through Griffith Park. My plan was to hike as close as possible (50 yards apparently) and then get a good picture for you. When I started my hike I could see the sign clearly with an obnoxious radio tower right above it. So the object of the rest of the afternoon was to get as close as possible to that radio tower. I did this LEGALLY through a combination of fire roads and foot paths in Griffith Park. It was almost surreal to be hiking through the brush and then come to a ridge and find yourself looking out over downtown LA. I (with pepper-spray always close at hand, mom) only met three other hikers all afternoon although I did see plenty others off in the distance including quite a few horseback riders. I knew when I was getting close (I had to approach from the back so I couldn't really see the sign until I came around the hill right behind it)
because I could hear helicopter tours flying by the sign about every five minutes. I never saw any signs indicating that I was somewhere I shouldn't be until I got right up close and read one affixed to the back of the "H" (a weak attempt if you ask me) and all that said was that vandals would be prosecuted, I was not vandalizing so I had nothing to worry about! I did have to jump one teeny tiny fence to get there, but again there were no signs on the fence and there was a clear path on the other side of the fence beckoning to me, telling me that not only am I not the first one with this idea, but there are enough other people with my idea to keep a nice grass-free path beaten down. In my defense I had not heard of the whole alarm and police within 50 yards thing until I googled it for this post but all in all it was a good workout, a good test of my mountaineering skills and well worth the (very minimal) risk involved ;)