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HIKE 2

Happy Camp Canyon

Location: Near Moorpark and Simi Valley

Highlights: Prime oak woodland and strange rock formations

Distance: 11 miles (loop)

Total Elevation Gain/Loss: 1,300'/1,300'

Hiking Time: 5 hours

Optional Map: USGS 7.5-minute Simi

Best Times: October–June

Agency: SMMC

Difficulty: Moderately strenuous

Trail Use: Suitable for mountain bikes

Happy Camp Canyon nuzzles in a crease between the long, rounded ridge called Big Mountain, just north of Simi Valley, and Oak Ridge, a taller parallel ridge to the north. These ridges and plenty more, like the Santa Monica Mountains, are caterpillarlike, parallel segments of the Transverse Ranges, which stretch from Santa Barbara County in the west to San Bernardino County to the east.

Lupine on Middle Range Fire Trail

Oil-bearing shales predominate in this region, evidenced by various oil wells and dirt roads built to access them scattered across the surrounding hillsides. On your ramble through the lower and middle parts of the canyon, keep an eye out for bright red stones, sometimes exhibiting a glassy texture, some right under your feet and others visible in outcrops. These rocks were formed by the slow combustion of organic material trapped in layers of shale.

Happy Camp Canyon itself remains quite pristine. Several groups of Chumash Indians called this place home in past centuries; later it became a part of an immense cattle ranch founded by a pioneer Simi Valley family. Purchased as a future state park in the late 1960s, it was traded to Ventura County for use as a regional park. Today, save for a few dirt roads and a smattering of artifacts from the days of cattle ranching, the 3,000-acre canyon park serves as prime natural habitat for native plants and animals and a restful retreat for hikers seeking to escape from the sights and sounds of city and suburban life. Beware that you may still run into cattle in the canyon. The October 2003 Simi Fire consumed most of the canyon’s hillside sage-scrub and chaparral vegetation, and the scorched trees still show scars.

To Reach the Trailhead: To get to the Happy Camp Canyon’s principal trailhead, follow the 118 Freeway west from Simi Valley or the 23 Freeway north from Thousand Oaks to the New Los Angeles Avenue exit. Go west 1 mile to Moorpark Avenue (signed Highway 23), turn right, and proceed 2.6 miles to where Highway 23 makes a sharp bend to the left. Keep going straight here, but then make an immediate right turn on Broadway. Proceed a short way to the east end of Broadway to a spacious dirt parking lot and trailhead.

Description: On foot, follow the trail that winds north and east along gentle, grassy slopes down onto the wide floor of Happy Camp Canyon. As you look down on a golf course at the canyon’s mouth, note the terraced aspect of the landscape on both sides. These are fluvial (streamside) terraces, sedimentary deposits from earlier flows of Happy Camp Canyon’s Creek.

Pass two minor side trails on the left (leading up to a maze of equestrian trails on the hill) and then another two on the right. At 1.0 mile you join the dirt Happy Camp Canyon Fire Road in the bottom of the canyon. Turn left, and 0.2 mile later you pass through a gate marking the start of the wilderness section of Happy Camp Canyon Park. At a fork just beyond, stay left (north) into the main canyon.

By 2.0 miles, the canyon floor has narrowed, and you’ve turned decidedly east and are strolling through beautiful coast live-oak woods (plus native sycamore and walnut trees), which continue intermittently up the canyon in the next 3 miles. A little stream flows in the bottom of the canyon during and for some weeks or months after the winter rains. You’re climbing at a gentle rate of about 200 feet per mile. You pass the ascending Wiley Canyon Road on the left at 4.1 miles, and at 4.7 miles you reach the site of an old well and pump. Large oak trees shade a cluster of picnic tables for a convenient lunch stop.

Continue following the graded dirt road about 300 yards past the well. The road ends, but a bulldozed track, eroded and very steep at first, curls 0.7 mile up the south slope of Happy Camp Canyon and then joins Middle Range Fire Trail on the crest of Big Mountain. If you are coming from the other direction, the easy-to-miss junction is marked by a cairn on a saddle. Use that ridge-running fire trail to return to lower Happy Camp Canyon at a point just above the gate marking the wilderness area boundary.

Live-oak woods in Happy Camp Canyon