101 Hikes in Southern California

Sandstone Peak

• Location Circle X Ranch (Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area)
• Highlights Most expansive view in the Santa Monicas, volcanic rock formations
• Distance & Configuration 6-mile loop
• Elevation Gain 1,400'
• Hiking Time 3.5 hours
• Optional Maps Tom Harrison Point Mugu State Park or Trails Illustrated Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area
• Best Times October–June
• Agency Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area
• Difficulty Moderately strenuous
• Trail Use Dogs allowed
• Permit None required
• Google Maps Sandstone Peak Trailhead

Sandstone Peak is the quintessential destination for peak baggers in the Santa Monica Mountains. The 3,111-foot summit can be efficiently climbed from the east via the Backbone Trail in a mere 1.5 miles, but the far more scenic way to go is the loop outlined below. Take a picnic lunch, and plan to make a half day of it. Try to come on a crystalline day in late fall or winter to get the best skyline views. Or, if it’s wildflowers you most enjoy, come in April or May, when the native vegetation blooms most profusely at these middle elevations. In addition to blue-flowering stands of ceanothus, the early- to mid-spring floral bloom includes monkey flower, nightshade, Chinese houses, wild peony, wild hyacinth, morning glory, and phacelia. Delicate, orangish Humboldt lilies unfold by June. The 2018 Woolsey fire scorched parts of this loop, but the native vegetation is adapted to fire and is returning quickly.

Sandstone Peak lies within Circle X Ranch, formerly owned by the Boy Scouts of America and now a federally managed unit of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The National Park Service generously provides free trail maps at the trailhead.

To Reach the Trailhead: The Sandstone Peak Trailhead is located near the western end of the Santa Monica Mountains, a few miles (by crow’s flight) south of Thousand Oaks. From the Pacific Coast Highway near mile marker 1 VEN 1.00, turn north onto Yerba Buena Road and proceed 6.4 miles.

Or from the 101 Freeway in Thousand Oaks, take Highway 23 south for 7.2 miles. Turn right (west) on Mulholland Highway, then in 0.4 mile turn right again onto Little Sycamore Canyon, which soon becomes Yerba Buena Road and reaches the trailhead in 4.5 miles. On either approach, you face a white-knuckle drive on paved but narrow and curvy roads.

Description: Start hiking at the large parking lot on the north side of Yerba Buena Road, 1.1 miles east of the Circle X Ranch park office. Proceed on foot past a gate and up a fire road 0.3 mile, then veer right onto the marked Mishe Mokwa Trail. Shortly thereafter, pass a spur on the right descending to the Mishe Mokwa Trailhead, but stay left.

The hand-tooled route is delightfully primitive, but it requires frequent maintenance to keep the chaparral from knitting together across the path. One of the notable and attractive shrubs is red shanks (also known as ribbonwood), which is identified by its wispy foliage and perpetually peeling, rust-colored bark. It is found only around here in the Santa Monica Mountains and in the Peninsular Ranges south of San Jacinto. After about half an hour on the Mishe Mokwa Trail, keep an eye out for Balanced Rock, which rests precariously on the opposite wall of the canyon. You’ll likely see rock climbers on the Echo Cliffs of Carlisle Canyon below.

By 1.7 miles from the start, you will have worked your way around to the north flank of Sandstone Peak, where you suddenly come upon a picnic table shaded beneath glorious oaks beside Split Rock, a fractured volcanic boulder with a gap wide enough to walk through (please do so to maintain the Scouts’ tradition). A climbers’ trail on the right leads to Balanced Rock, but you continue on the vestiges of an old dirt road that crosses the canyon and turns west (upstream). You pass beneath some hefty volcanic outcrops, and at 3.1 miles come to a signed junction and turn left onto the Backbone Trail toward Sandstone Peak.

Pass some water tanks on the right and an unsigned service road up to the tanks. Shortly thereafter, a spur on the right takes you about 50 yards to the top of a rock outcrop called Inspiration Point. The direction-finder there indicates local features as well as very distant points such as Mount San Antonio (Old Baldy), Santa Catalina Island, and San Clemente Island.

Press on with your ascent. At a point just past two closely spaced hairpin turns in the wide Backbone Trail, make your way up a slippery path to Sandstone Peak’s windswept top. The plaque on the summit block honors W. Herbert Allen, a longtime benefactor of the Scouts and Circle X Ranch. To the Scouts this mountain is Mount Allen, although cartographers have, so far, not accepted that name. In any event, the peak’s real name is misleading. It, along with Boney Mountain and most of the western crest of the Santa Monicas, consists of beige- and rust-colored volcanic rock, not unlike sandstone when seen from a distance.

On a clear day the view is truly amazing from here, with distant mountain ranges, the hazy LA Basin, and the island-dimpled surface of the ocean occupying all 360 degrees of the horizon. To complete the loop, return to the Backbone Trail and resume your travel eastward. Descend a twisting 1.5 miles to return to the trailhead.