Don Shirley: Pianists make history
Iris Schneider on Annie Leibovitz
Veronique de Turenne is following the Woolsey fire aftermath at Here in Malibu.
Archive: Mountains
Veronique de Turenne is following the Woolsey fire aftermath at Here in Malibu.
The kittens, all females, were born to P-62 and are the first litter to be tagged in the hills north of the 101 freeway.
Trail cams placed by Robert Martinez catch a mother and three cubs in the mountains above Glendora.
This weekend's fire in Los Angeles isn't even the worst La Tuna Canyon fire in recent times.
The kittens were abandoned by their mother, P-42.
Even those Angelenos who like the promiscuous sprouting of non-native Mexican fan palms across the urban terrain will have to agree these are misplaced.
The two new cats are nearly grown males and face the threat of dominant males already in the Santa Monica Mountains along with the freeways, rat poison and other dangers.
The mother P-39 and both cubs died on the 118 in Santa Susana Pass since Dec. 3.
The male puma cub was struck on the 118 Freeway, which claimed P-39 last month.
Nick Johnson likes hiking so why not do the whole Santa Monica Mountains. Alone. Starting at night on P-22's turf.
From the LA Observed archives, a piece for the winter solstice on a Chumash cave painting in the local hills.
The mother of three mountain lion kittens was killed on the 118 freeway, the National Park Service confirmed.
Eliminating P-45 won't solve the problem of livestock and pets being killed, the National Park Service explains.
The mountain lion, one of the last adult males in the Santa Monicas, is blamed for killing more than 10 alpacas this past weekend.
As of last night, officials had found one body burned to death in a car and counted 18 structures destroyed.
The highway in the San Gabriel Mountains lets you drive 66 miles through "some of the most difficult terrain in the U.S."
New mountain lion kittens have been tagged in two litters in the Santa Susana Mountains.
Newsweek goes long on an exploration of the mysteries about Richardson and the LA Sheriff's Department.
The mountain lion's long-term prognosis doesn't get any better on the news that he's probably preying on the LA Zoo's animals now.
A male and a female were born in the western Santa Monicas in November or December.
Griffith Park mountain lion is over the mange and up to 123 pounds. Still no mate, however.
Cub of P-23 may be the only survivor from her spring litter. Watch the video and hear the young cougar squeak.
An untagged male cougar believed to be two to three years old was hit by traffic about 7:30 this morning.
He is three to four years old and the biggest Santa Monica Mountains lion that scientists have tracked since P-1. Now the question is: where did he come from?
Scientific American takes stock and concludes "there’s simply not enough land for each of the several males left to establish new territory and find mates."
This is the flip side of the healthy local mountain lions in the San Gabriels I posted about earlier today.
Robert Martinez's cameras stationed in the mountains above Glendora captured two more feeding lions — in color this time.
He was the first male lion known to have crossed freeways north out of the Santa Monica Mountains.
A motorcycle rider named Jesse Lopez was cruising with friends on Glendora Ridge Road in the Angeles National Forest when he collided head-on with a fire truck. The GoPro...
New batch of photos gathered by remote camera in the eastern end of the Santa Susana Mountains.
Planted in two streams last year, they are the first California red-legged frogs to grow up in the Santa Monicas since the 1970s.
The mountain lions in the San Gabriels are untagged, uncollared and unnamed. But they are just as beautiful as the ones the National Park Service monitors in the Santa Monica Mountains.
P-41, an adult male weighing 130 pounds, was tagged and released on May 7 in the mountain range above Burbank and Glendale.
How long P-22 was under the house in Los Feliz, the lion cubs who crossed the 101 freeway and how many pets have been found at lion kills in the Santa Monica Mountains.
P-32 is the first male to successfully disperse from the mountains across the freeway. His sister did it a month earlier.
It's just the second time researchers have spotted a lion successfully crossing the freeway — and the first to leave the Santa Monicas.
Robert Martinez's camera above Glendora captures family of cougars in the daylight — followed by a night visitor.
The cougar kittens that were extracted from under a car in Burbank in 2011 — saved from curious residents who were poking at them with broomsticks — now live at a sanctuary in Riverside. An update.
Sheriff’s Deputy Andrew Wood drifted into a bike lane while typing on his patrol car screen last December and struck entertainment attorney Milton Olin Jr.
It was very nice having a couple of episodes of soft rain fall on my head (and my yard) over the weekend. But despite the isolated newsworthy pummeling over and just below the San Gabriels, this was not much of a rain event.
New trail camera video of P-22 shows the young male cougar is mostly over the mange that alarmed researchers earlier in the year.
New mountain lion photos from the naturalists who monitor the population in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The images were taken near Malibu Creek State Park when the cubs were 11 months old.
The bar for getting us to pay attention to local cougar photos keeps being raised. This new batch from the Santa Monica Mountains meets the test.
Johanna Turner and Denis Callet are friends who met through their shared pursuit of capturing trail photos of the LA area's mountain lions, bears, foxes and other fauna.
Since the deadly Sylmar earthquake in 1971 it has been recognized that the flood control dams in the San Gabriels were not built sufficiently strong to hold up if a severe regional quake hit while the dams retained a full load of water.
The National Park Service said Thursday that the cub was untagged — not one of the cougars they have been following. Which is interesting.
The female puma known as P-19 is nursing three cubs born a few weeks ago in the Malibu Springs area, the National Park Service said today on Facebook. Two females and a male; DNA is being tested to determine the father.
The Angeles Crest 100 is a 100-mile endurance race through the mountains from Wrightwood to Pasadena. The runners take off in the dark and run on trails for 24 hours. Or so.
Analysis of the mountain lion struck and killed while crossing the freeway in Agoura Hills in early October shows that it came from outside the current Santa Monica Mountains cougar population.
Mountain lion photographed during the day in the San Gabriels. More on Griffith Park's P-22. And it's tarantula mating season, so step lively.
They take their time about it and appear to be settling in for a long night or perhaps two. Robert Martinez sure has a knack for putting his trail cameras in the right place.
Forget P-23. Robert Martinez's trail camera caught a lion stashing a newly killed deer just minutes before he got there. His cams have caught local cougars, bears, foxes and more — but this time, he says, "I'm almost certain I was being watched."
P-23 was captured and DNA-tested in the Santa Monica Mountains as a newborn last summer. Newly dispersed from her mother, P-23 was photographed eating a deer kill on the pavement of Mulholland Highway on Sunday morning.
Another California black bear comes down into a foothills backyard, this time in Arcadia. Sure looks right at home. Bigger pic inside.
The wild bobcats that roam the west end of the Santa Monica Mountains have had it hard in recent times. Now biologists fear profound threats to survival.
While the Mount Wilson web cam is out of service, you can get your fix of local mountain scenery with this video, "Above the Inversion Layer."
Brenda Rees of the website SoCal Wild joined a volunteer outing last weekend to count bighorn sheep in the eastern San Gabriel Mountains. There are believed to be more than 400 sheep in the range.
The ambitious Megacities Carbon Project aims to monitor the greenhouse gas emissions of "the largest human contributors to climate change: megacities." They are starting with Los Angeles and Paris, and have sensing stations planted across the LA basin.
Metro, the agency in charge of the massive 405 freeway upgrade and widening project, announced that the weekend work was completed 29 hours early. It went to so well that no full shutdown of the northbound freeway was required, as originally threatened.
The former Cold War missile base in the hills above Chatsworth has become an "unsanctioned playground for hikers, taggers and vandals, raising safety concerns among neighbors and triggering a Los Angeles Police Department internal investigation."
The National Weather Service has put out a special weather statement and declared a red flag alert in inland areas of Los Angeles County.
National Park Service biologists affixed tracking devices recently on male and female kittens born to one of the adult female lions already being tracked through the mountain range. They were fathered by a well-known lion, P-12, who unfortunately also fathered the cubs' mother.
DNA testing that links the young lion to cats north of the 101 freeway suggests "a rare bright spot for a group of animals that is suffering from an extreme lack of genetic diversity," the National Park Service says.
Some 41,000 acres at the Big Tujunga Canyon end of the Angeles National Forest reopened this weekend for the first time since the big Station Fire in 2009. Read more
I love stories about infrastructure: sewers, pipelines, trash and the like. The subject of SoCal investigative author Edward Humes' new book warms my wonkish heart — "Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash" — and has some good LA angles.
Savko bought a small grocery on the twisty part of Mulholland Highway in the Santa Monicas west of the San Fernando Valley in 1961. He would park his Harley-Davidson out front, other bikers would see it, and they began stopping in.
After the Station Fire denuded vast areas of Angeles National Forest, the U.S. Forest Service made a crucial call to plant seedlings from species of fir and pine trees that nature had already decided didn't really fit with the larger plan for the San Gabriels. Yeah, nature wins again — but what does Chevron have to do with it all? LA Observed photos from the fire zone.
When the Las Virgenes bookmobile shuts down Friday, there will be just four left in the county library system.
The pair of 5-pound cougars discovered beneath a parked car on Orange Grove Avenue apparently had not eaten in two weeks. They were taken to the California Wildlife Center in...
Lots of roads in the higher elevations of Los Angeles County are having snow closures after Monday's storm.
The animal sanctuary on Little Tujunga Canyon Road is again on the verge of financial collapse and closure, founder Martine Colette says.
This week's Monday commentary on KCRW: the man whose children rescued him from his crashed car off a mountain road, and the man who wasn't as fortunate.
Once again, it appears the initial plan did not take into account the wholly predictable public backlash -- or the L.A. media's obsession with anything animal.
The thunderstorm towers are soaring high over the San Gabriels.
Newcomb installed the first ski lift in Southern California, at Mt. Waterman.
A male lion known as P-18 left his mother's home range in Malibu Creek State Park earlier this summer and was struck by a hit-and-run driver near Getty Center.
The parents of Mitrice Richardson have reached a tentative agreement to settle their lawsuits against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for $900,000, the L.A. Times says.
Michele Chimienti is a Los Angeles County civil engineer who oversaw upgrades of the flood control dam in Big Tujunga Canyon — and she's a world-class fencer.
Until the tunnel under Mulholland Highway opened in 1930, there wasn't much "pass" to Sepulveda Pass. There was a dirt road and trails, but most of the traffic between...
The latest news and gimmicks on the coming 405 shutdown, including the LAPD asks a favor of Lady Gaga.
This warning has popped up just off the Mulholland Highway segment in upper Hollywoodland, east of the Lake Hollywood reservoir.
Ted Soqui checks out the seven-mile stretch of Angeles Crest Highway above La Cañada-Flintridge that reopened Friday
How LAX is planning for the worst weekend ever. Isn't it weird how the best job of covering the 405 freeway construction disruption so far hasn't been by any traditional media at all, but by the websites of Metro and of Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky?
In a clip taken from the 1968 documentary "Cineaste de notre temps," the actor and filmmaker cruises through the Hollywood Hills in a convertible — with the Beach Boys singing "California Girls" on the radio — and complains there aren't enough people in L.A.
Where is this place: The Ranch? Turns out it's actually the historic former home near Malibu Canyon of razor heir King Gillette, one of the more interesting Angelenos of yore.
Veronique de Turenne breaks some personal news today on her blog.
All lanes of the freeway will close in Sepulveda Pass for an enitre weekend in July. You've been warned, but you will be warned again.
When you're local, you know where the best hot weather ski run lets you get wet at the bottpm.
Yosemite National Park was cut off to road traffic by snow and downed trees on Monday, but highways 120 and 140 reopened into the park this morning.
In all the decades that Mammoth Mountain has been a destination for SoCal skiers, this looks to be the winter with the most snowfall. At least since they began keeping records in 1969.
There's lots of visible snow this afternoon on the mountain slopes lining the Los Angeles basin, but the predictions of snow below 1,000 feet proved to be overly enthusiastic.
Up on the roof on Sunday afternoon, after the storm.
Guy McCarthy of Watershed News grabbed a shot of the Sunday cloud cover over the basin from Baldy Village, below the summit of Mount Baldy.
The CHP is letting drivers cross in and out of Southern California again on Interstate 5 through the Tehachapis and on I-15 in Cajon Pass.
If you have any plans to hit Big Bear or Running Springs this winter, you will be going the long way around.
Here's the scene a few minutes ago from the Mount Wilson cam, looking east from the 150-foot solar tower toward the 60-inch telescope dome.
Based on clothing and physical description, authorities believe it may be Michelle Yu, the missing hiker from Venice.
Great scenery from a hang glider soaring over the mountains.
The Times cites an unnamed law enforcement source saying the skeletal remains brought out of Malibu Canyon yesterday appear to be female, and women's clothing was found nearby.
The sheriff's department is taking great pains to point out that there's no evidence at all linking the remains to the missing woman, but they are checking.
Three new mountain lion kittens are being tracked in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Nearly 200 acres of grassland and oak trees at the junction of the Ventura Freeway and Las Virgenes Canyon Road have been acquired by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority.
On Sunday's stage 8 of the Amgen Tour of California, riders will loop four times up the Rock Store Climb on Mulholland Highway in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Hundreds of dump trucks a day have been driving through a Sylmar neighborhood to dispose of sediment from the Station Fire.
KTLA reporter Eric Spillman was riding his mountain bike in Sullivan Canyon when he saw what looked like a branch laying across the trail. It was no branch.
The view from Mount Wilson, just a couple of minutes ago. It's not dark at 7 o'clock any more....
There's a catch: the firm wants City Hall approval for 20 of its disputed supergraphics.
Once again, residents of about 500 homes in La Cañada Flintridge, La Crescenta and Acton have been told to leave due to an approaching "very cold and vigorous storm system."
From this morning in La Cañada Flintridge, via Channel 7.
The heavier-than-expected rain that fell overnight has challenged debris basis and runoff channels across the front of the San Gabriels, especially in drainages where the Station Fire burned.
The strongest flood warnings from the National Weather Service are for the Orange County canyons. The morning update on the Los Angeles situation from Mayor Villaraigosa's office follows.
More than 1,000 homes beneath the Station Fire burn areas are now under mandatory evacuation orders, per media reports.
'Rocks the size of frozen turkeys' tumbled down Canyonside Road in La Crescenta during Monday's storm, says the father of Dashel Dupuy, the 13-year-old who shot this amazing video. It's...
Those black bears that keep coming down into the foothills of Monrovia and Duarte may not be native to the San Gabriel Mountains at all, but descendants of 33 "problem" bears relocated from the Sierra Nevada.
Three or four storms that could drop as much as 20 inches of rain on the San Gabriels and the adjacent foothills are expected to start rolling in this weekend.
Henck was known in the San Bernardino Mountains as the builder and manager of the Santa's Village amusement park in Skyforest, and as a keeper of the mountain communities' past.
This week's snowfall covered some of the ash from the Station Fire that has given the San Gabriel Mountains a sickly appearance. Snow is also better than rain when it...
The highway is now open through the San Gabriel Mountains, though caution is urged due to crews clearing rocks and high winds....
This morning's view of the San Gabriels and Cucamonga Peak from Riverside, by Guy McCarthy of Watershed News. More Sunday snow pictures in his Flickr stream. Coordinates fixed...
It's about 79 degrees in Los Angeles, a little warmer in spots, with essentially no wind. Up on Mount Wilson, the light is sharp. Thanks for everything. Cam grab at...
In the second part of her series at Native Intelligence, Iris Schneider (and a CBS crew) accompany former prisoner Bruce Lisker to the beach. Earlier, Iris was along as he...
Over the weekend, La Crescenta author Bernadette Murphy had a nice opinion piece in the L.A. Times invoking John McPhee and his seminal writing on debris flows out of the...
This is pretty dramatic. Photo from NASA Earth Observatory, hat tip to Emily Green of Chance of Rain. Click it to see full sized....
At the morning shift change at the Hansen Dam command post, more than 1,000 firefighters paused to remember Capt. Tedmund Hall and Arnaldo Quinones, the County Fire veterans who died...
Staff writer Susan Orlean has been in Los Angeles some of the summer and offers a blog entry on The New Yorker website about the week of fires. Excerpt: All...
Here's the latest page from the U.S. Forest Service command post, with evacuations and other data. The Station Fire stands at 121,762 acres....
Where Eric Spiegelman's weekend fire film has drama and altitude, Dan Finnerty's has flame. Lots of flame....
I love this paragraph for what it says about the quirkiness of Los Angeles, or at least of the Tujunga area. Much more authentic and telling than the media meme...
If it's not a word, it should be. TJ Sullivan's daily view from the Westside captures perhaps the week's most voluminous pyrocumulus cloud yet, dwarfing the InterContinental Hotel in Century...
Incident commander Mike Dietrich just told the 5 p.m. media briefing that the weather is still working against firefighters in the Angeles National Forest. "This is a very angry fire...
I'll do a fire news roundup after the 5 p.m. briefing at Hansen Dam. Meanwhile, flying in or out of Los Angeles has been more visually dramatic during the fires....
The webcam on UCLA's tower in the Mount Wilson solar observatory complex has no picture right now. Not clear if the outage is traffic or fire caused. [* Update: Comes...
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's face was not in evidence in the fire coverage this weekend — it has been a county, state and national forest show. But with the fire coming...
Wow. The Station Fire is now at 85,000 acres — and there have been no Santa Ana winds pushing this monster along. Some homes were lost last night near Acton,...
What begins as a behind-the-scenes video of the fire camp and media swarm at Hansen Dam turns into an emotional briefing on the deaths of two Los Angeles County firefighters....
View to the west from the Mt. Wilson Solar Observatory tower cam five minutes ago. Smoky, but operating. Click to embiggen. Earlier at LA Observed: Mt. Wilson in danger (with...
The two firefighters killed in a vehicle accident Sunday on Mount Gleason above Acton were identified by the Los Angeles County Fire Department. Tedmund Hall, who lived in San Bernardino...
Here is today's image from Earth Snapshot. Click it to biggify....
Tonight's briefing at the fire command post at Hansen Dam began with deputy chief Mike Bryant of the county fire department announcing that two of his men died about 2:30...
KNX News Radio just tweeted (and presumably reported on the air) that firefighters have been pulled off Mount Wilson: "Officials expect critical communications point to be overrun by fire about...
* Updated through the afternoon The fire front in the San Gabriels stretches 19 miles east to west, with containment essentially at nil. Previously evacuated area in La Cañada...
Los Angeles lawyer web content producer Eric Spiegelman, an LA Observed reader from way back, made a time lapse video — 90 minutes in 24 seconds — of the smoke...
The city La Cañada Flintridge has been emailing out expanded mandatory evacuation areas all morning as the Station Fire spreads unchecked, now over 7,500 acres. Authorities now want to clear...
News and notes are hidden after the jump. Also see today's Mark Lacter morning headlines at LA Biz Observed, and follow Mark and Kevin on Twitter....
This cruddy, albeit colorful, air we're breathing today extends up to Mt. Wilson at 5,700 feet. This is the hazy view from the 150-foot solar tower cam....
Veronique de Turenne drops off a load, posts some pictures at Here in Malibu: "Kind of freaks me out, but it's also fascinating, this other world where tons of junk...
When I read about the horrible crash where Angeles Crest Highway dumps out at Foothill Boulevard in La Cañada Flintridge, I wondered if the semi-truck driver had used the sand...
It took alpine-trained volunteers and a helicopter to do it, but Andrew Hillery, 24, and Chris Cannizzaro, 23, both of Playa Del Rey, were collected today from the deep snow...
Just about every news photographer I know has a favorite spot to go grab the obligatory snowy peaks behind downtown Los Angeles shot that news desks want every year or...
I had no idea you could do this. Author Aimee Bender reserved the Mount Wilson Observatory's historic 60-inch telescope for the evening and took along two dozen writer friends and...
The tiny ski area on the Angeles Crest Highway reopened Saturday after five years of stillness. Only two lifts were running, there were no rentals nor were there even difficulty...
Christy Porter was a photojournalist in Kentucky when the little paper where she worked did hard investigations of local sacred cows like the university basketball program. She moved to L.A....
Hollywood location meister Harry Medved, co-author of Hollywood Escapes, has a piece on MSN about the locations used in this year's Oscar-nominated movies. If the beach in Letters from Iwo...
New at LA Observed
Clinton fundraises in LA
Jim Henson Studios on La Brea became a presidential campaign stop on Thursday.
Brown declares disaster area
The natural gas leak above Porter Ranch now qualifies for various government actions. Story
Performing arts with cheer
Donna Perlmutter closes out 2015 with productions downtown and on the Westside.
