The Hollywood Hills Trail Map Quietly Changed This Year. The Signage Hasn't Caught Up.

If you walked up to the Mulholland Drive entrance of Runyon Canyon sometime in the last six months and found the fence gone from the West Trail, you were not imagining things, and you were also ahead of the official record. The city's own parks page still describes that trail as closed. AllTrails, as of its most recent update this spring, does too. Meanwhile, hikers have been walking it since mid-February.

That gap between what's posted and what's actually open is the real story in the Hollywood Hills this year, and it stretches across three connected green spaces that most residents treat as a single loop: Runyon Canyon, Wattles Garden Park, and Lake Hollywood Park. One fire touched two of them. All three now operate under slightly different rules than the ones printed on their gates. Here is what's actually true on the ground heading into fall.

What happened on January 8, 2025

The Sunset Fire ignited inside Runyon Canyon Park and spread across roughly 43 acres before crews contained it. Fueled by dry brush and Santa Ana winds, it triggered evacuation orders for tens of thousands of residents across the Hollywood Hills. The West Trail, the steepest and most scenic of the park's three main routes from the Fuller Avenue entrance, took the worst of the damage and was fenced off for habitat rehabilitation.

The rest of the park stayed open. That distinction mattered more than it sounds. Runyon Canyon Road, the graded fire road that most casual walkers and stroller-pushing residents use, never closed. Neither did the Star Trail, the medium-difficulty climb to Inspiration Point. The Hero Trail, the punishing route up the western ridge, also stayed accessible for most of the year despite several arson fires reported elsewhere in the canyon in the months that followed. For a park that draws crowds daily for its dog-walking culture and its view of the Hollywood sign, keeping two of three routes open through a full fire-recovery cycle is not a small operational feat.

The trail reopened in February. The paperwork didn't move with it.

The West Trail reopened during the week of February 16, 2026, more than a year after the Sunset Fire closed it. The fence came down. Hikers went back up. What didn't happen, at least not immediately, was any update to the sources people actually check before they leave the house. The Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks continued to list the West Trail as closed on its own site. AllTrails carried the same closed designation into March.

This is worth sitting with for a second, because it changes how you should plan a hike here this fall. The physical trail and the digital record of the trail are not the same thing, and right now the record is behind. Certain sections along the West Trail also remain fenced even with the main route open, so a closed sign near the top doesn't necessarily mean the whole climb is off limits. The practical move is to treat park apps as a starting point rather than a verdict, and to make the call at the gate rather than from the couch.

Next door, the same fire is still being repaired

Wattles Garden Park sits immediately west of Runyon, connected by trails that cut through Trebek Open Space, and it took damage from the same fire event. The city's restoration project there is funded with $350,000 in Measure A RESTORE dollars, and the scope is specific: rebuilding the wooden gates and arch gateway at the entrance, restoring fire-damaged irrigation and landscaping, and installing erosion controls to manage debris and mudflow on the hillside.

That last piece matters for anyone who uses the connector trail between the two parks. Erosion control work usually means temporary rerouting, loose gravel, or partial closures that don't always get posted in advance. Wattles has historically been the quieter, less trafficked half of this loop, popular with dog walkers precisely because it doesn't pull the Runyon crowds. A construction footprint on a trail that size changes the experience more than it would somewhere with more redundant paths.

The park most people default to has never played by Runyon's rules

When Runyon feels too crowded or too steep, the default alternative in the neighborhood is Lake Hollywood Park, a flat loop with sweeping views of the Hollywood sign from the hilltop above the reservoir. It looks like a simpler, calmer version of the same experience. The rules underneath it are actually stricter, and that mismatch trips up a lot of first-time visitors.

Lake Hollywood Park is not fenced, has no restrooms, and is open sunrise to sunset. Dogs are required to be leashed at all times, which surprises people who assume it operates like Runyon's 90 off-leash acres. In practice, enforcement has been described consistently as loose unless a dog is aggressive or causing a disturbance, and rangers who patrol the park do write citations when they choose to. There is also a smaller fenced section near the picnic tables where even leashed dogs are not allowed at all. None of this is posted in a way that's easy to miss once you're standing in the grass, but it's easy to miss before you arrive.

Three green spaces, one comparison

What to actually check before you go this fall

• Don't trust a single source. If AllTrails or the city site shows a closure, look for a recent post from a local outlet or a firsthand account before assuming it's still accurate.
• Expect partial closures inside an otherwise open trail. A reopened West Trail can still have fenced sections higher up.
• If you're heading to Wattles, build in extra time near the connector to Trebek Open Space in case erosion work has rerouted the path.
• If you're bringing a dog to Lake Hollywood Park, keep the leash on near the fenced picnic area regardless of what other visitors are doing.
• Go early. Every lot serving these three parks, from the Mulholland Drive gravel lot to the small pull-off at Lake Hollywood, fills by mid-morning on weekends.

The neighborhood rewards people who check twice

None of this is a criticism of how the city has handled recovery here. A 43-acre fire that closes a trail for over a year and still leaves two-thirds of a heavily used park open the entire time is, by most measures, a good outcome. What it does mean is that the Hollywood Hills right now is a place where the ground truth moves faster than the official record, and the people who get the most out of it are the ones willing to verify a gate in person rather than take an app's word for it.

That instinct, checking the thing yourself rather than trusting the label on it, tends to serve people well in this neighborhood far beyond its trails. If you're the kind of person paying attention to how a place actually functions day to day, not just how it's described online, Renée Avedon would be glad to talk through what else has changed in the Hollywood Hills and the wider Westside this year. Let's Connect.