Friday Hike Day: Old LA Zoo, Griffith Park

This trail has no signs or markers and can be a bit confusing. There are plenty of restrooms at the park and parking is free.

You want to park in the lot at the merry go round, but the farthest one beyond it. The merry go round should then be behind you, picnic area in front and playgrounds to your front right and down right. The last pic, at the bottom of this post, has everyone pointing to the unmarked trail to take you to the less obvious animal cages, shacks and back cage entrances. 

You will hike up a hill, across and beyond a half asphault/half dirt area, into brush. You will see remnants of chain link fences. Stay to the right and you'll come upon a half buried cage on your left. It's still accessible but use caution throughout.

There is a creeptastic shack with tons of graffiti. We could smell something burning and saw wisps of smoke within but upon further exploration by two of our teen hikers, could not locate the source.

The pic above is Bee Rock. We could not find the actual trail to the summit so we took a narrow trail straight up the hill side. It was slippery and rocky, totally not recommended for, nor able to accommodate strollers. 

The ruins of the zoo are interesting to view. They are meant to be inaccessible, as shown by all the chain link fencing and chain locks. However, as you can also tell by the grafitti, there are often ways to get in. 

You can make your exploration more stroller friendly by going toward the white gated entrance instead. There are flat dirt paths and paved walkways in that direction. Past that gate and to the left, will take you to the fronts of a few old animal enclosures and picnic area. You can continue to follow the flat, wide paths with a stroller but it will be uphill. 

We all enjoyed exploring which really upped the adventure scale for everyone. We did not see any animals beyond squirrels at the playground and birds. The woods are full of exotic sounding bird calls.

Enjoy! 

Everyone is pointing to the way you can go to explore the zoo ruinsbthat are located deeper in the brush.