If you live above Franklin Avenue and you've been waiting for someone to just tell you what's actually walkable right now, here's the short version: Runyon Canyon's West Trail came back in February after more than a year closed. Wattles Mansion did not. And the free curb parking that used to make a Saturday morning loop around the reservoir an easy, no-cost errand now comes with a permit rule that didn't exist before the fire at all.

Three pieces of the same outdoor routine, three different recovery clocks. That mismatch, more than any single reopening headline, is the thing worth understanding if you're planning your weekends around these hills.

One fire, three timelines

The Sunset Fire ignited on January 8, 2025, and burned roughly 43 acres inside Runyon Canyon Park, fueled by dry conditions and Santa Ana winds strong enough to trigger evacuation orders for tens of thousands of Hollywood Hills residents. No homes were lost. But the park itself took the hit, and so did the adjacent Wattles Garden Park, whose gates, irrigation lines and hillside plantings sat in the fire's path as well.

What followed wasn't one recovery. It was three, moving at different speeds depending on what kind of infrastructure was damaged and who was paying to fix it.

Runyon Canyon's West Trail was the headline win. It stayed closed for more than a year while the rest of the park's main loop, the Fuller Avenue entrance, the fire road, Inspiration Point and Clouds Rest, remained open and absorbing the crowd that couldn't use the western ridge. The West Trail reopened this past February, restoring the full three-trail system that off-leash hikers and dog owners had relied on before 2025.

Wattles Mansion is still not one of those wins. The Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks has a restoration project underway at Wattles Garden Park that covers reconstruction of the wooden gates and arch gateway, repair of fire-damaged irrigation and landscaping, and erosion controls to manage debris and mudflow on the hillside. The city is funding it with $350,000 in Measure A RESTORE dollars. The mansion itself, the Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey design built for Gurdon Wattles and known as Jualita, remains listed as temporarily closed, and recent visitor reports describe it as still shut for renovation more than a year after the fire that damaged it.

The parking around Lake Hollywood didn't reopen so much as it changed shape. And that's the part nobody's headline covered.

Table: what's actually true right now

The parking change is the one that sticks

Here's why the parking shift matters more than either trail story. The West Trail closure and the Wattles restoration are both temporary by design, they have an end state where things go back to how they were. The parking permit district does not work that way.

Before the fire, the Lake Hollywood Homeowners Association had been pushing the Los Angeles Department of Transportation to review a Preferential Parking District for the streets ringing the reservoir, the same streets that hikers doing the 3.3-mile paved loop around Lake Hollywood have used for free curb parking for years, since neither the park nor the reservoir loop has an on-site lot. In an update to residents, the association noted that LADOT's review had been delayed because the department was consumed with signage and staffing needs tied to the wildfire response, pushing the tentative review timeline to mid-2025 before it could even reach City Council for final approval.

That review has since moved through, and current visitor reports now describe the neighborhood around the park as permit-only on weekends and holidays, with enforcement active enough that non-residents are getting ticketed rather than warned. Unlike a trail closure, a Preferential Parking District doesn't reopen once repairs finish. It's a standing city designation. If you've been telling out-of-town guests to just drive up and grab curb parking for the reservoir walk, that plan needs an update, and it's not coming back once the last mudflow control is installed at Wattles.

A smaller, stranger wrinkle: the squirrel signs

One more thing worth knowing before you head up Fuller with the dog. Signs have gone up in Runyon Canyon warning hikers about sick and dead squirrels spotted along the trails, with the alert circulating through the Friends of Runyon Canyon Facebook page and asking visitors not to touch the animals, to keep dogs leashed near them, and to report sightings to park rangers. The city's Department of Recreation and Parks says it didn't post the signs itself, but confirmed its urban ecologist team is monitoring the situation and has looped in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Nobody's calling it an emergency. It's the kind of small, current, on-the-ground detail that only shows up if you're actually paying attention to what's happening in the park this month rather than reading a trail guide written two years ago.

What this actually changes about a weekend up here

If your usual routine is the Runyon loop from Fuller, followed by a drive over to walk the reservoir, here's what's different in practice:

• The full Runyon trail system, main loop plus West Trail, is open again, so the crowding that built up on the East Ridge and fire road while the West Trail was closed should ease back toward normal.
• If you're heading to Wattles Garden Park for the grounds themselves, the paths are open, but don't plan an event around the mansion. It isn't taking bookings right now.
• If you're driving to the reservoir loop on a Saturday or a holiday, check for posted permit restrictions before you park. The old assumption that curb space near Lake Hollywood Park is always free no longer holds on weekends.
• Keep dogs leashed near any posted wildlife advisory signs at Runyon, even in the off-leash sections, until the squirrel situation gets a clearer answer.

None of this is dramatic. It's the ordinary texture of living somewhere that had a bad fire year and is still working through the paperwork, the funding cycles and the permit reviews that come after the flames are out. Runyon Canyon Park still draws close to two million visitors a year, drought or no drought, fire recovery or not, and the Friends of Runyon Canyon Foundation still describes the place as "an oasis from the rushed lifestyle of the big city." That's still true on the main loop. It's just true on a slightly different map than it was before the fire.

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