A longtime Fuller Avenue regular took her usual pre-work loop into Runyon Canyon one morning in March, the way she has most weekdays for years. She got as far as the fork below Indian Rock before turning around. The sign hadn't moved since the fire. West Trail: closed.
That's the strange middle ground Hollywood Hills hikers have been living in since February, and it's worth sorting out, because the headline everyone read wasn't quite the whole story.
What actually reopened in February
In late February 2026, KTLA reported that Runyon Canyon's West Ridge Trail had reopened for the first time in more than a year, after the Sunset Fire scorched roughly 60 acres of the Hollywood Hills in January 2025. For a lot of newer residents, that closure had lasted long enough that they'd never actually seen that stretch of canyon open. The story read like the park was whole again, and the trail was packed with hikers the Sunday it reopened. A bathroom at the Fuller Avenue entrance was also reported as coming soon.
That's real progress, and it matters if you've been rerouting your walk for eighteen months. But "reopened" and "back to normal" turned out to be two different claims.
Why the park's own status pages don't quite agree
Check the city's page for Runyon Canyon right now and the language is more guarded than the February headline suggested:
"Runyon Park is now open, however the West Trail is closed."
Trailforks' live status board, updated within the past few days, lists the entire region as a "Minor Issue," with one specific trail segment still flagged at the more serious "Significant Issue" level. AllTrails carries its own note that the West Trail was still marked as temporarily inaccessible heading into spring.
None of these three sources is wrong. They're describing overlapping pieces of the same canyon under slightly different names, which is exactly the kind of thing that only becomes obvious once you're standing at a trail junction with conflicting information behind you. The practical takeaway for anyone who lives here is simple: don't let a February headline set your expectations for an August walk. Check the specific segment, not just the park name, before you leave the house.
That distinction changes more than it sounds like it should, because Runyon isn't a single loop with one door. There are five separate ways in:
- Fuller Avenue and Vista Street, the two gates at the bottom of the park in the south
- Mulholland Drive, a gate at the top of Runyon Canyon Road on the north side, with its own small parking area
- Solar Drive, a gate at the northwest end near the West Ridge trail
- A spine-ridge footpath that drops in from the top of Wattles Garden
If your usual route uses the western half of the park, the current status affects you more than it affects someone who sticks to the eastern side near Fuller. And the infrastructure recovery has lagged behind the trail recovery in its own way: the park's listing still states plainly that there are no restroom facilities on site, even with a new one reportedly on the way to the Fuller entrance. Worth knowing before you plan anything longer than the standard loop.
Where the overflow actually went
A fair number of regulars have quietly stopped defaulting to Runyon at all while the picture sorts itself out, and two nearby spots have absorbed most of that traffic.
Lake Hollywood Park, the walking loop around the reservoir, doesn't carry any of Runyon's uncertainty. There's no fire-recovery asterisk and no status page to check before you leave, which has made it the low-drama choice for anyone who wants a reliable walk without wondering which gate is open this week.
The other is Wattles Garden Park, tucked off Franklin. Its spine-ridge footpath connects straight into Runyon's upper trails if you still want the climb, but the garden itself also works as a loop on its own, through grounds designed by architects Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey and tended for two decades by head gardener Alexander Urquhart. The historic Wattles Mansion is currently listed as temporarily closed, but the surrounding public garden grounds remain open and still one of the more overlooked walking routes in the Hills.
The rest of the morning routine hasn't changed much. Pace on Laurel Canyon Boulevard still builds its menu around whatever chef and owner Sandy Gendel picked up at the farmers markets that week, which is a fair description of the kind of restaurant that survives on regulars rather than reviews. A little further toward Beachwood, Beachwood Cafe keeps doing what it's done for years, quietly, right up until a Harry Styles lyric sent a wave of visitors through its door.
The part worth remembering
None of this changes the fact that the canyon is, on balance, more open than it's been in over a year. What it does mean is that the tidy version of the story, the one where a headline says "reopened" and everyone slides back into the exact walk they used to take, isn't quite true yet. The park is healing in sections, and as of this week, the sections still don't fully agree with each other about where things stand. If you live here and you're heading out the door, check the specific trail. Then decide whether today's the day for Runyon, or another lap around the reservoir.
If you're weighing a move in the Hollywood Hills and want a read on how a specific street or canyon pocket is actually holding up, not just what the listing photos suggest, Cindi Brodack is always happy to talk it through. Let's connect.
