Aliso & Wood Canyons Wilderness

Aliso & Wood Canyons Regional Park, the largest park in the hills above Laguna Beach, preserves 3,400 acres of pastoral Orange County.

Most locals and other hikers refer to the low hills that back the Orange County coast from Corona del Mar to Dana Point as the Laguna Hills or “the mountains behind Laguna Beach.” Actually, the northerly hills are the San Joaquin Hills, their cousins to the south the Sheep Hills.

Here’s how nature writer Joseph Smeaton Chase described an outing in the Sheep Hills in his classic 1913 book, California Coast Trails: A few miles along a road that wound and dipped over the cliffs brought us by sundown to Aliso Canyon. The walls of the canyon are high hills sprinkled with lichened rock, sprinkled with brush whose prevailing gray is relieved here and there by bosses of olive sumac. Our camp was so attractive that we remained for several days.”

Aliso & Wood Canyons Regional Park is a great place to hike, but it does present a minor access problem: From the parking area to the mouth of Wood Canyon is a less-than-scintillating 1.5 mile walk alongside a road. Some hikers avoid this road walk by bringing their bikes--either mountain bike or standard bicycle will do--and cycling to the “true” trailhead. Cyclists can ride some of the park’s trails (the wider dirt roads), then leave their bikes at conveniently placed racks and walk the narrower, hiker-only paths.

 From the parking area, hike along the paved into Aliso Canyon. The road, and a parallel dirt path for hikers, heads southeast, and meanders just west of Aliso Creek. After 1.5 miles of walking, you’ll arrive at the park’s most significant signed junction (complete with restrooms no less). Join Wood Canyon Trail (a dirt road) and begin a gentle ascent through Wood Canyon. Look left for the side trail leading to Cave Rock, where you’ll find a number of caves, wind-sculpted into a substantial sandstone formation.

 Look left for the side trail leading to Cave Rock, where you’ll find a number of caves, wind-sculpted into a substantial sandstone formation.

After rejoining Wood Canyon Trail, continue up-canyon to another left-branching side trail that leads to Dripping Cave a.k.a. Robbers Cave. The robbers who hid out here in the 19th century included cattle rustlers and highwaymen, who held up stagecoaches. The “Dripping,” much of the year anyway, refers to water seeping above the cave.

 

Wood Canyon Trail continues to meet Mathis Canyon Trail. A short distance up Wood Canyon Trail is an old sheep corral. You can turn around in the vicinity or choose to extend your hike in a couple of different ways.

 If you want to leg it just a little more, head up Mathis Canyon, then north on Coyote Run Trail. Next, fork right to reconnect with Wood Canyon Trail. For a longer loop, bear left on northbound Rock-It Trail and connect with West Ridge Trail.

a junction with Wood Canyon Trail on your right. Join this path (a dirt road) as it begins the very gentle ascent of Wood Canyon. Skirting the base of the Sheep Hills, the path visits the remains of an old corral and delivers the trees promised on the park map--Five Oaks Canyon and Sycamore Grove.

From Sycamore Grove, you can loop back via a trail on the opposite side of Wood Canyon by joining the short connector trail that leads to Coyote Run Trail.

Ambitious hikers will join either Lynx Trail or Cholla Trail (near the end of Wood Canyon Trail), head west over West Ridge Trail, then south to Rock It Trail or Mathis Trail, either of which returns you to Wood Canyon and the way back to the trailhead.

 Directions to trailhead: From the San Diego Freeway in Laguna Hills/Mission Viejo, exit on Alicia Parkway and drive 4 miles south. Trailhead parking for Aliso & Wood Canyons Park is located a quarter-mile south of Aliso Creek Road. Then a right into the parking lot, which is opposite Laguna Niguel Regional Park and near the Orange County Natural History Museum.