Bush sunflower and black mustard cover the hills at Portuguese Bend. Photo copyright 2019 by Anna Boudinot.
Anyone who’s ever been on a dating app in Los Angeles can tell you that there are two things every Angeleno loves: tacos and hiking. As far as hiking is concerned, I’m a Griffith Park aficionado myself, and of course there are the other “fan favorites” of Temescal Canyon and Runyon Canyon. But the folks in the South Bay know that the truly prime hiking in LA is in Rancho Palos Verdes.
If you take Crenshaw Boulevard all the way south, you’ll wind up on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in southern Los Angeles County. The region is notable for beautiful homes, Wayfarer’s Chapel, and one of the very few properties Donald Trump owns in California. It’s also the site of Portuguese Bend Reserve, a nearly-400-acre nature preserve with miles and miles of hiking trails. It’s a gorgeous spot with ocean views and hills swooping down into a canyon. Catalina Island looks so close you feel like you can reach out and touch it.
People have been enjoying this view for thousands of years, starting with the Tongva and culminating with the current residents, who have made it as difficult as possible for you to park there. In the 1800s, the land was owned by a couple of dudes whose last names you’ll recognize: Jose Dolores Sepulveda, who built a cattle ranch on the site and named it Rancho Palos Verdes (Green Sticks Ranch?), and Jotham Bixby, who leased the land to Japanese farmers. In between Sepulveda and Bixby, there was a whaling station there. The whale hunters were predominantly Portuguese, which is why the area is called Portuguese Bend. From 1869-1885, they killed hundreds of gray whales and sold thousands of gallons of whale oil. If we have one thing to thank the petroleum industry for, it’s for making whale oil obsolete.
Catalina Island as seen from Portuguese Bend Reserve. Photo copyright 2019 by Anna Boudinot.
In the 1900s, when Palos Verdes became a popular location for residential development, Portuguese Bend was spared because it is slowly falling into the ocean! The LA Times reported in 2009 that “Construction of Crenshaw Boulevard through the area in 1956 trigged a landslide that destroyed more than 100 homes, and about 100 more have been destroyed since then.” But it’s not just sudden landslides that keep the ground moving, it’s a constantlandslide. An article from Cal State Dominguez’s Department of Earth Science explains that “The Portuguese Bend landslide is about a half-mile wide and three-fourths of a mile long. This land has been sliding for about a quarter-million years, which sounds like a long time but to us geologists that’s a blink of an eye.” The slide moves slowly, about fourteen feet per year, so you’ll have plenty of time to go for a hike.
Mustard flowers at Portuguese Bend Reserve. Photo copyright 2019 by Anna Boudinot.
There is no shortage of trails to choose from, and the reserve is also popular with mountain bikers and equestrians. Modern Hiker details a six-mile hike that takes you all the way down to the tide pools at Sacred Cove, and SoCalHiker outlines a three-mile hike past a unique geological feature called “pillow lava.” Some trails are wide, some are single-track. Markers tell you which trail is which, but they don’t tell you how many miles from one junction to the next. When I visited Portuguese Bend, I decided to wander a bit and not worry so much about following a route.
Spring flowers were in full bloom: I saw lupine, California poppies, phacelia, bush sunflower, and even nasturtium. The reigning flower, however, was black mustard, which coated the hills so completely they appeared pure yellow. After hiking for about half an hour, I turned onto a single track-trail that took me through a brake of mustard that was so tall I couldn’t see where the path was going. After fumbling my way through the thicket for about twenty minutes and feeling a little like She Who Walks Behind the Rows, I switched over to a wider trail and consulted Google Maps to find the way back to my car.
View from the bottom of the canyon. Photo copyright 2019 by Anna Boudinot.
An important thing to remember about Portuguese Bend is that it’s not like most Los Angeles hikes, where you start by climbing up a mountain and end by going back down the mountain. Here, you’re descending into a canyon, so the beginning of the hike is easiest. Make sure you have enough water and sun protection to get you back to your starting point. The last thirty minutes of my hike involved serious uphill effort in direct sunlight, and I wished I had come better prepared. It wound up being so strenuous I stopped on the way home to get—you guessed it—a taco.
If you want to spend the entire day in the South Bay, check out my blog posts about San Pedro.