If you have hiked Cherry Canyon on a Saturday morning lately and wondered why the parking area on Hampstead Road fills up before nine, the short answer is not that Cherry Canyon suddenly got popular. The short answer is Altadena, and a forest service order most hikers have never read.
For close to two years now, a chunk of the Angeles National Forest immediately east of La Cañada Flintridge has been off limits under the Eaton Fire Area Closure. That closure covers ground that used to absorb a lot of the foothill hiking traffic that now lands on Cherry Canyon instead. Understanding why takes about four minutes, and it changes how you should plan a fall weekend here more than any trail app will tell you.
What the closure actually covers, and what it doesn't
The Eaton Fire burned through more than 14,000 acres in January 2025, and in the months after, a handful of the hardest hit trails reopened, including Mt. Wilson Trail and Mt. Lowe Trail Camp. That reopening got covered as a return to normal. It wasn't the whole picture.
The Eaton Fire Area Closure itself has since been extended through December 31, 2027, and it still covers the Mount Wilson Toll Road below Mt. Wilson Trail, the Altadena Crest Trail and its connector, the unpaved Chaney Trail, and the Eaton Canyon Trail. Those are exactly the routes a lot of San Gabriel Valley hikers used to default to on a weekend morning, and they are the routes that pushed a chunk of that traffic west into La Cañada.
Here is the detail that actually matters if you are planning around this: Chaney Trail Road, the paved access road that leads up toward Sunset Ridge Trail, is scheduled to reopen to vehicles this fall, managed by LA County Public Works. That sounds like the closure is lifting. It isn't. The road being drivable again doesn't touch the unpaved Chaney Trail itself, which sits inside the forest service's closure zone and stays shut through the end of 2027 regardless of what happens with the road. Millard Canyon follows a similar split: the trails through the canyon are open to walk or bike, but the campground is still closed, no fire rings, no potable water, camping prohibited even if you're just passing through.
So the practical read for anyone in La Cañada is this: don't wait for Cherry Canyon to quiet down. The trails that used to draw hikers away from it are locked up for another fifteen months at minimum, and the one piece that's reopening this fall is a road, not a trail. If you've been hiking Cherry Canyon at 7 a.m. to beat the crowd, that's not a habit to break anytime soon.
| Trail or Road | Status as of fall 2026 | Reopens |
|---|---|---|
| Chaney Trail Road (paved, vehicle access) | Closed to vehicles | Fall 2026 |
| Unpaved Chaney Trail | Closed, inside Eaton Fire closure zone | Through Dec. 31, 2027 |
| Eaton Canyon Trail | Closed | Through Dec. 31, 2027 |
| Altadena Crest Trail + connector | Closed | Through Dec. 31, 2027 |
| Mt. Wilson Toll Road (below Mt. Wilson Trail) | Closed | Through Dec. 31, 2027 |
| Millard Canyon trails | Open to hike/bike | Campground still closed |
Why Cherry Canyon was the obvious overflow
Cherry Canyon sits just south of the 210, tucked into the San Rafael Hills right next to Descanso Gardens off Hampstead Road, which puts it outside the Angeles National Forest closure boundary entirely. It was never part of the burn area and never part of the order. That's the whole reason it absorbed the traffic: it's the nearest fully open trail network to a set of hikers who used to have other options a few miles east.
The park itself covers 131 acres, with the first 55 purchased by the city back in 1986 using a mix of city and Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy funding. The payoff for that decades-old purchase is a genuinely good hike for what it is: a fire lookout tower and radio relay station at the top with a clear view north toward the San Fernando Valley, JPL visible from the overlook, and a spot called Five Points where the fire roads converge and you get a 360-degree view stretching from the San Gabriel Mountains to the ocean on a clear day. It is not a secret trail. It has just been asked to do more work than it used to.
If you want a read on trail conditions before you go, La Cañada Flintridge Trails, the volunteer group that maintains the network, posts wildflower and trail updates and sells a printed map of the Cherry Canyon system and the city's loop trails at the Flintridge Bookstore, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Lanterman House for a two dollar donation. It's a small, useful habit if you're hiking this fall and want to know what's actually underfoot before the Descanso crowds start arriving for the pumpkins.
The other clock in town doesn't care about any of this
While the forest service order runs on federal fire recovery timelines, Descanso Gardens runs on its own calendar, and that calendar is dependable in a way the trail situation isn't. Carved, the garden's Halloween pumpkin trail, runs October 3 through 30 this year. Enchanted Forest of Light follows for the holidays, with the stained glass cottages, the light installations along the Promenade, and the Descanso Railroad dressed up for the season.
The addition worth knowing about is new for this year: two ticketed evenings, December 10 and 11, pairing the light displays with live music and craft cocktails, featuring a six piece band called Yachty by Nature playing yacht rock from the late seventies and early eighties. It's a small production change, but it's the kind of detail that tells you the garden is trying something different with Enchanted rather than just running last year's script again.
Farmhouse at Descanso Gardens, the sit-down restaurant built into the grounds under chef Rich Mead, stays open through both Carved and Enchanted, and reservations for those windows open the same day tickets go on sale. If you're planning a Carved evening or one of the December cocktail nights, that's worth booking early rather than hoping for a table on arrival.
Where the loop actually closes
None of this is really two separate stories. It's one fall in La Cañada: the trail you can count on is busier than it should be because of a fire recovery timeline in a different city, and the garden next door to that trail has its own fully scheduled season running on top of it. Put those together and the shape of a good weekend here becomes obvious. Hike Cherry Canyon early, before the lot fills, then walk over or drive the five minutes down Descanso Drive for Carved once the light starts to go gold in the afternoon. Skip the idea that either one is going to get less crowded on its own between now and the holidays. The forest service order runs through 2027. Descanso's season runs through New Year's. Plan around both rather than waiting out either.
If you're new to the area or you've lived here long enough to remember when Cherry Canyon felt like a locals only trail, this is the version of La Cañada you're actually living in right now: one good hike doing double duty, and a garden next door that knows exactly what it's doing with its calendar. Chris Reisbeck has spent years working this stretch of the foothills and pays attention to the details like these because they're part of what makes the neighborhood worth knowing well, not just selling well. If you ever want a longer conversation about what's changing in La Cañada Flintridge, Chris Reisbeck is glad to have it.
