Patches of blue sky and a peek of sunshine! After avoiding mountain trails for weeks, Barbara and I got Spring fever and took to the hills to "test" the rain-soaked trails. We played it safe, dressed for any weather challenge, and chose Charles Fleming's simple, December 27, 2013, L.A. Times hike around the Santa Monica Mountains’ Fryman Canyon, named 2012's "best running trail" by L.A. Weekly. Barbara and I haven't hiked Fryman since it reopened after renovations 14 months ago, and we were curious to see the upgrade (basically a repaved 1/4-mile path from the trail entrance, and spiffy restrooms in the parking lot.) Studio City/L.A. locals refer to this hike as Fryman, but that's only a slice of the scope. The Betty B. Dearing Trailhead is in Wilacre Park, off the parking lot at Laurel Canyon and Fryman Road in Studio City. A short, paved slope leads to an unpaved path with 128-acre Wilacre Park and views of the SF Valley north on the right. As the trail continues, deeply wooded, 122-acre Fryman Canyon comes into view to the south on the left, and at the westernmost point of the trail is Coldwater Canyon Park, home to one of our favorite spots—the Tree People. Continuing on a circular path south, and then east, we exited the trail at Iredell Lane, caked from the ankles down with mud. Hikers take Fryman for granted, but we all can thank environmental activist Nancy Hoover Pohl (1915-2001) for saving this popular urban oasis. When Pohl moved to Studio City in 1951, developers were threatening to build in Fryman Canyon. Pohl convinced L.A. to regulate hillside growth, and then she came back at them again in the 1970s to lobby—all the way to Sacramento—against building a proposed Laurel Canyon Freeway. For 60 years Nancy Hoover Pohl fought to curb development, and a few years before she died, she was instrumental in establishing the Betty B. Dearing Trail (named for a fellow conservationist) that so many love hiking today. On a normal Sunday Fryman would be loaded with hikers, runners, and dog walkers, but a quarter of the way up, two hikers actually warned us that we wouldn't reach the top because of the mud—a challenge we happily accepted as the price for a good hike and the gorgeous views of the green valley and canyon. The slop we trudged through (it was oddly fun) wasn't for the tidy or less-than-sure-footed, often with puddles or erosion and one cryptic message in mud tubes on the side of the rutted trail. A simple walk became a mud-soaked test for us and the few hikers and dogs we met on along the way, but birdsong filled the air, and along Iredell Lane and Fryman Road, magnolia and orange trees were in full bloom—"so gay in a melancholy way, that it might as well be Spring." Coming March 20!