From the top of Outpost Drive, the western horizon has looked the same for eighteen months. The ridge above Fuller Avenue was there, the fire road was there, the dogs and the joggers were there. What was missing was the loop. For most of 2025, Runyon Canyon's West Ridge Trail sat behind fencing while sixty acres of chaparral rebuilt themselves after the January 2025 Sunset Fire. This summer, for the first time since the burn, the west side is open again, and the small pedestrian infrastructure at the Fuller gate is finally catching up to the traffic it has been absorbing for forty years. If you live on the Outpost side of the canyon, the change is less about a hike and more about the shape of an ordinary weekday evening.
What Actually Changed This Year
The park never fully closed. The east ridge, Inspiration Point, the paved fire road, and the dog areas stayed open through the rebuild. The West Ridge Trail, the steeper single-track that gives the loop its westward view down toward the Pacific, did not. It reopened in late February 2026 after more than a year behind temporary fencing installed for habitat recovery.
Three concrete shifts are worth knowing before you head over this month:
- The full loop is walkable again. Counter-clockwise from the Fuller gate, you can climb the east side to Inspiration Point, cross the ridge, and descend the west back to the paved fire road. That was not possible from January 2025 through February 2026.
- A permanent restroom is nearly finished at the Fuller entrance. Construction on a two-stall, all-gender prefabricated facility with two drinking fountains began in early January 2026 on a roughly fifteen-week timeline. As of late March, the yellow-block structure was in place with fresh concrete around it and a portable toilet still sitting nearby, meaning ribbon-cutting was close but not done. This is the first permanent restroom at the park.
- The signage has not caught up. The city's own laparks.org page and AllTrails were both still flagging the West Trail as inaccessible weeks after the reopening. If you check apps before you walk out the door, you will read outdated information. The trail is open.
Why the Fuller Entrance Suddenly Matters More
The Fuller Avenue gate is the closest public trailhead to Outpost Estates. It has always carried disproportionate load. Runyon Canyon draws roughly two million visitors annually across a hundred sixty acres, and the great majority of them enter from Fuller rather than driving up to the Mulholland lot at the 7300 block. Until this year there was no public restroom anywhere on that hundred sixty acres. Residents on Fuller, Curson, and the lower blocks of the Outpost knew what that meant in practice.
The new facility changes the calculus for two groups of residents. If you are the one who walks up from Franklin most mornings, the trailhead now functions like a real park entrance rather than a residential curb with a gate at the end. If you are the one whose front hedge sits along the walk-up route, the pressure that a bathroom-less park pushes onto surrounding streets should ease, at least at the margin. The approved project cost was roughly $961,000, funded through a mix of park fees and federal dollars and approved by the Recreation and Parks Board in 2024 after several years of neighborhood debate about whether a permanent restroom was worth the investment on a park that had done without one since 1984.
The other quiet piece of news for Outpost residents is what has not changed. The park still lists official hours of 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., there are still no vehicle gates from the Outpost side, and street parking on Fuller remains free but limited, with permit-only blocks nearby that enforcement checks regularly. Summer weekend mornings continue to fill the closest legal spots before 9 a.m. If you are walking down rather than driving over, none of that matters. If a houseguest wants to drive to the trailhead in July, it does.
The Loop Reads Differently Now
For anyone who has hiked Runyon for years, the West Ridge is the part of the park that feels least like a Hollywood attraction. It is quieter than the fire road, steeper, and closer to what the canyon looked like before the yoga field and the fitness influencers. The Sunset Fire burned along and above that ridge. Walking it this summer means walking through a landscape in visible recovery: new coastal sage growth, blackened stumps of laurel sumac still standing next to green regrowth, and stretches where the ground reads younger than the trail beneath it.
A practical reading of the current loop from the Fuller gate:
| Route | Distance | Character in summer 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Paved fire road up, back the same way | ~1.6 mi out-and-back | Easy, crowded, mostly unchanged |
| Fire road up, West Ridge down | ~2.7–2.8 mi loop | The signature Runyon experience, restored |
| East ridge to Indian Rock via Mulholland gate | Varies | Best 360-degree view, less relevant from Outpost |
Counter-clockwise gets the steep climb over first, which most locals will already know. What is worth flagging is that the west descent still has looser footing than it did before the fire, so if you have not been on it since 2024, treat the first outing as reconnaissance rather than a workout.
The Walk Back Down to Franklin
Any Outpost resident who has done this walk regularly knows the finish matters as much as the hike. The block of Franklin Avenue at the bottom of the Fuller gate has been the neighborhood's low-key dinner strip for decades, and it is one of the reasons a west-facing evening walk from the Outpost has always been a full loop rather than an errand.
The anchors are still there. La Poubelle at 5907 Franklin, the late-night French bistro that opens at 6 p.m. and runs until 1:30 a.m. Tuesday through Saturday, is still the place where the block reads most like Franklin Village in the 1990s. Birds Hollywood continues to hold down the rotisserie-and-happy-hour role a few doors away, the sort of place you end up when a hike takes longer than expected and no one wants to drive to Sunset. The Oaks Gourmet works in the other direction: a wine bar, café, and specialty market where you can pick up olives and cheese to bring home rather than sit down. La Villita Cantina rounds out the strip with brunch, happy hour from 5 to 7, and a tequila and mezcal list that is more serious than the room suggests.
For an Outpost resident whose default habit has been to drive down the hill to Sunset Boulevard for dinner, the West Ridge reopening changes the arithmetic of a Thursday evening. Walk down through the neighborhood, do the loop counter-clockwise in the last hour of light, cross Franklin, and eat within four blocks of the trailhead. The cars stay at home.
A Note for Anyone Newer to the Block
If you moved into the Outpost in the last eighteen months, the western canyon you have known is not what the western canyon usually is. The version you got, with a partial closure, no restroom, and a fire-road-only loop, was the version an entire year of residents adapted to. Summer 2026 is the first season in which the neighborhood's most valuable piece of public open space is functioning at full capacity again. If your household routine formed around the closure, it is worth walking the loop once this month to reset the map.
The Sunset Fire remains a recent enough memory that habitat recovery on the west ridge will keep progressing visibly through the fall. Wildflower seasons the next two springs are the kind of thing a long-time Outpost owner will remember for years. Turnout in the first weeks after the February reopening was heavy enough that KTLA led with the crowds, which suggests the muscle memory of the loop is coming back quickly.
If you own a home in the Outpost and want the same kind of granular read on how the neighborhood is functioning day to day, week to week, and season to season, that is what our practice is built around. Neal Baddin works exclusively in these micro-markets. Request Your Instant Home Valuation to start the conversation.
