EISPIRATEN

I was hiking the Altadena Crest Trail and started at the Cobb Estate going west. It seems to end at an urban farm with a bunch of cute baby goats on Skylane Drive, which I hiked down to get out. There is a western segment that goes from Loma Alta park until Chaney Trail, but the two halves don't connect. The eastern section that starts at Eaton Canyon also has a part where you have to walk on the road to thru hike it (unless you want to go up to Echo Mountain) but it's only a block or two.

The official map shows this bifurcation, dubbed the Skylane Gap:


I came across a Google My Map that I can't find out the author of that shows some possible connections for this hole. The most promising option goes around the preschool and up the ridge in yellow towards the Z ranch



I fired up LA County's GIS-NET and sure enough the blue line in the map above is an easement owned by LA county for hikers



I found an article from 2012 mentioning that the trail behind the kindergarten had no trace of being there anymore https://patch.com/california/altadena/a ... 857239348b.

Curious if anyone has any more info on closing the so called 'Skylane gap'.

@Sean and or @Paul Ayers might have some info. Maybe they'll see that I just tagged them.

I am more interested in the gap between Eaton Cyn and Cobb Estate/Rubio Cyn.

@hikeup thanks. I hiked from Eaton up to Rubio last weekend. At 34.199434, -118.119095 there is a little scramble shortcut on AFC land (https://arroyosfoothills.org/land/rubio ... n-project/, where they mention installing a bridge) which puts you on the trail that hits the Gooseberry Motorway which goes down to Rubio Creek. From there you can take the Old Echo Mountain Trail that intersects the Lower Sam Merrill right around where the big powerlines are. I'm not aware of any way to bypass the houses on Rubio Vista/Pleasantridge Dr, as there are no public easements. Maybe someone knows a homeowner who wants to put this in their will. What I usually do is re-join the ACT here https://goo.gl/maps/WsQkB9qip4frtsV96

They've been talking about closing those gaps for years. We did a little work on the east gap. The county was supposed to come in and do something too, but I'm not sure if that happened or not. I believe there is a legal issue holding things up across Rubio.

I don't know of any activity on the west gap.

I tried to hike the Skylane Gap and it felt weird following the easement, as it goes right next to the kindergarten. I ended up climbing up to the Star of Palawoo instead which is on this big ridge that connects up to the Mt. Lowe road. I bushwacked down to the debris basin dam area off the east side. There's a streambed above it you can walk up to reach a (currently dry) waterfall, and it looks like you can probably get up to the firebreak between Cobb Estate and Mt. Lowe Road from there too.

In this pic it shows the gap. The kindergarten is in the center-left, and the ridge in the top right with the yucca which is more or less where the ACT would theoretically go over and continue west