Take a Hike!

New Edition of Topanga State Park Map Charts Adventure for Hikers, Wildflower Aficionados

In 1999, the Temescal Canyon Association (TCA) created a map of Topanga State Park, replete with photo-illustrations, hiking trails and handy facts.   Ted Mackie, owner of Palisades Bicycles and TCA treasurer (his wife, Carol Leacock, is the longtime president of TCA) recalls how the map came to be.   ’State Parks wanted to do a map and they didn’t have any money,’ Mackie says, ‘so TCA fronted the original printing. We hired a cartographer and paid all the costs.’   ’Ted was the one whose idea it was to create the map,’ says map photographer James P. Kenney, also a Palisadian. ‘He was the one who had the initiative. The idea was to provide a needed service and to raise money for TCA, an environmental group. It was very successful and it’s been reprinted a few times.’   This summer, Mackie and Kenney have reunited to update the map, which has sold 25,000 copies since its release a decade ago.   Currently in production at Post Printing on Via de la Paz, the Topanga State Park map will improve on the original. While essentially containing the same information, the 2009 edition features additional hiking trails and eight new color photographs by Kenney. These images, shot with both 35 millimeter film and digital cameras, are ‘representative of Topanga State Park,’ Kenney says. ‘A casual hiker or a hiker who is there all the time would see things representative of the park. Since I have been hiking these trails for 35 years, I had a good idea of what to look for.’ That includes such sites as the Temescal Canyon waterfall, Camel Rock, Temescal Gateway Park, Backbone Trail, Los Liones Canyon and Will Rogers State Historic Park.   Retailing at $3, the maps will be available next month at Trippet Ranch, Will Rogers Park, and at such local businesses as Palisades Bicycles, The Letter Shop and Village Books.   But in the meantime, enjoy this preview.