Hiking areas in the Hollywood Hills and Santa Monica Mountains each have their own distinct personality. Griffith Park has a scrubby, Wild West feel. Will Rogers is defined by its ascent through a dramatic, vegetated canyon. And Runyon Canyon feels like a big Hollywood exercise party — dogs invited. But if you want to hike surrounded by some of the most outlandishly elite real estate in Los Angeles — perhaps the world — then hit Franklin Canyon. Nestled in a cozy valley just below the high “spine” of the western Hollywood Hills, near where Mulholland meets Coldwater, Franklin boasts a couple of historic reservoirs built in 1914 by William Mulholland, plus the astonishingly picturesque and duck-filled Heavenly Pond. Follow its lush, woodsy ascending trails up to literal heights from which you can look across and down onto super-mansions resembling French mini-estates and take in the amazingly verdant, placid and protected rolling/jagged mountainous landscape right smack in the middle between the San Fernando Valley and L.A. Basin. For a magical moment, all of this is yours. 2600 Franklin Canyon Dr., Beverly Hills. —Adam Gropman

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