Secret Stairs Hike | Murphy Ranch

Today I managed to pry myself out of bed early enough to join a group of friends on a hike from the book Secret Stairs by Charles Fleming. Secret Stairs chronicles the hidden stairs in the Los Angeles area, creating scenic walks and providing historical information about each route. Today we traveled the last trail in the book and what was actually the most difficult walk with the most steps--- 1,117, and we walked up half of those!  Definitely difficult, but we were all pretty proud of ourselves once we reached the ruins, and ecstatic after we got to the top of the 500! 

This was the Murphy Ranch Trail- a hike into the Santa Monica Mountains via Rustic Canyon in  Topanga State Park that takes you through the rusted, graffiti-covered ruins of a camp built by Nazi sympathizers in the 1930s. The refuge was built to prepare for what sympathizers saw as the inevitable fall of America to the Nazis--- their plan was to create a self-sustaining compound. But... this never happened and the compound was eventually raided by U.S. authorities and shut down in the early 1940s. It was an incredibly unsettling place, given the history behind it, and there was an interesting juxtaposition between the ruins and the graffiti and the forest. 

The water tank at the very beginning of the trail.

Looking up the first set of stairs we traveled down to get to the ruins. This is a pretty good indication of all the endless, narrow stairs on the hike, and it doesn't matter which direction you travel--- your legs will feel like Jell-o either way!

The views from the trail were amazing!

 The camp's power station.

Interior of the power station.

Back of the power station building.

Ruins of the fueling station.

This message is an excellent thing to see as you complain about the idea of walking up 500 stairs.