Spend a Few Quiet Hours in Solstice Canyon in Malibu

With the arrival of winter and winter solstice, now is a good time to visit Solstice Canyon Park in the Santa Monica Mountains. The park is enjoyable year-round, but winter is a particularly fine time to ramble through the quiet canyon. From the park’s upper slopes, you might even sight gray whales migrating past Point Dume.

Southern Californians don’t spend much time pondering the winter solstice, that time in the Northern Hemisphere when we have our shortest day, our longest night. After all, the days aren’t that short, at least in comparison to Helsinki, for example, whose poor, sun-starved residents spend all but a few hours of December days in the dark.

Solstice, to modern city dwellers, may seem to be nothing more than a scientific abstraction--the time when the sun is farthest south of the Equator.

To some of the earliest residents of Southern California, the Chumash, however, the winter solstice was a very important occasion. It was a time when the cosmic balance was very delicate. The discovery of summer- and winter-solstice observation caves and rock art sites have convinced anthropologists that the Chumash possessed a system of astronomy that had practical application.

Park Opened on Solstice

Solstice Canyon Park opened on the summer solstice, 1988. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy purchased the land from the Roberts family. The new park is administered by the Mountains Conservancy Foundation, the operations arm of the Conservancy.

The foundation has been working hard to transform the former 550-acre Roberts Ranch into a park. Ranch roads are being converted to foot trails. Milk thistle, castor bean and other assorted non-native plants are being eliminated. Debris left behind by a 1982 fire has been hauled away.

Destroyed in the fire was the Roberts family home, an extraordinary ranch-style residence that was highly praised by many home and architectural publications. The house incorporated Solstice Canyon’s creek, waterfalls and trees into its unusual design.

Home Built in 1865

Another Solstice Canyon house--the Mathew Keller House--was built in 1865 and is said to be the oldest house in Malibu, perhaps in the Santa Monica Mountains. When restoration is completed, the house will become a museum and visitor center.

Another Solstice Canyon structure of note is really a strange one. It resembles a kind of futuristic farm house with a silo attached and defies architectural categorization. Bauhaus, maybe. Or perhaps Grain Elevator Modern. From 1961 to 1973, Space Tech Labs, a subsidiary of TRW, used the building to conduct tests to determine the magnetic sensitivity of satellite instrumentation. The TRW buildings are now headquarters for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

Several trails explore Solstice Canyon. TRW Trail leads to the canyon bottom, where the hiker can pick up Old Solstice Road (closed to vehicular traffic) and saunter through the canyon. Sostomo Trail climbs the park’s east- and south-facing ridges and offers fine coastal views.

Florence Roberts, with simple meter but heartfelt sentiment, expressed her feelings about Solstice Canyon in a poem. She etched her rocking-horse rhyme on a rock stair near her house:

Leave behind your worries and cares,

And climb with us these 13 stairs.

Our bubbling brook, our waterfall,

Here we relax and enjoy it all.

Directions to the trail head: From Pacific Coast Highway, about 17 miles upcoast from Santa Monica and 3 1/2 miles upcoast from Malibu Canyon Road, turn inland on Corral Canyon Road. At the first bend in the road, you’ll leave the road and proceed straight to the very small Solstice Canyon parking lot. Park here or in a safe manner along Corral Canyon road.

The hike: Walk up the park road to a small house, which is headquarters for another conservancy organization, the Mountains Conservancy Foundation. Near the house, join the signed TRW Trail, which switchbacks up toward the strange new home of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. Employees report that they much prefer this spacey, hillside office to their former, far more stressful downtown Los Angeles location at 1st Street and Broadway.

TRW Trail crosses a paved road, ascends west, then drops south into Solstice Canyon. Turn right on Old Solstice Road. In a few minutes you’ll pass the Mathew Keller House, and in a few more minutes, Fern Grotto. The road travels under the shade of oak and sycamore to its end at the remains of the Old Roberts ranch house. Palms, agave, bamboo and bird of paradise and many more tropical plants thrive in the Roberts’ garden gone wild. A waterfall, fountain and an old dam are some of the other special features found in this paradisiacal setting, known as Tropical Terrace.

Just below Tropical Terrace is signed Sostomo Trail, which ascends a chaparral-cloaked slope that still bears evidence of the 1982 fire. The trail dips in and out of a stream bed, begins climbing and offers a great view of Solstice Canyon all the way to the ocean. At a junction, the trail splits, with the right fork leading to Sostomo Overlook, while you head left toward Deer Valley. The trail crosses an open slope, then tops a ridge for a great view of Point Dume. The trail briefly joins a dirt road, then resumes as a path and descends a scrub-covered slope to the bottom of Solstice Canyon. A right turn on Old Solstice Road leads past El Alisar Picnic Area and returns you to the trail head.

Solstice Canyon Trail

Six-mile loop through Solstice Canyon Park; 600-foot elevation gain.