The roads highlighted below, in particular, those west of Topanga, arguably rate the most eclectic, challenging, diverse you'll ever encounter:
Toggling a feature name of any canyon road you see on the plot, above, provides a subjective account of what you'll likely encounter.
Geography of the Transverse Ranges ~California's Transverse Range complex consists of two sheered intermontane orogenies which generally rise in peak elevation, west to east. The lower Transverse Range orogeny rises from the Pacific Ocean at its western terminus, and extends beyond Universal City to form Griffith Park. The Upper Transverse Range orogeny similarly rises from the ocean at its western terminus to form an intermontane that extends eastward, from the Santa Ynez Mountains west of Santa Barbara, to the Topatopa Mountains north of Ojai, to the Santa Susana Mountains that lie north of Moorpark, Simi Valley, and the San Fernando Valley, to the San Gabriel Mountain complex north of Los Angeles proper, to the San Bernardino Mountain range, exceeding 10,000 ft. in elevation. This intermontane ultimately arcs southeast to the north edge of the Peninsular Ranges. The Northern Transverse Range intermontane serves as an intervening obstacle that partitions the Los Angeles Basin from the rest of the continent. Subsequently, the Los Angeles Basin enjoys a rare Mediterranean climate, a function of it's proximity to Pacific maritime air masses, where California's Transverse Ranges serve to impound its vegetation, while insulating the greater Los Angeles Basin from the rest of the state's desert climate. These ranges boast Southern California's greatest climatic variation. These ranges, windward to the aforementioned maritime influence, usurps considerable moisture, and cyclically funnels air, generating both Newhall and Santa Ana geostrophic affects, which blows the L.A. basin clean of its smog, while blocking, temporarily, the predominant maritime influence, from time to time.
The Transverse ranges are readily accessible, they are only somewhat exhilarating in grandeur relative to California's escarpment, but they do provide quite appealing vistas, smog permitting.
Although the magnetic deinclination of California's other ranges elongates primarily north-south in orientation, the Transverse Ranges possess a unique eastward deinclination, a tectonic phenomena. Its present state is resultant of massive erosion ex ante to profound tectonic collision ex post of several orogenies. Geographers could describe this region as predominantly variable density chaparral climax vegetation, where chamise and coastal sage check erosion on lower south facing slopes, and increasingly xerophytic vegetation on north facing slopes are rooted upon a series of uplifted, bisected fault blocks perpetually dissected by erosion, exposing tilted the sedimentary structures indicative of the Santa Ynez, Santa Monicas, and Santa Susanas, but primarily granitics observed in the San Gabriels and San Bernardinos. Geological implications upon canyon driving can be generalized. Implications we face insofar as canyon driving is such that falling rock is likely to be a more predominant variable on the northern and eastern component during winter and spring. Exfoliating granitics are likely to be sharp, so there is likely to be a significant difference in number of maintenance vehicles cyclically dedicated to road maintenance relative to the northeastern component. Landslides or mud slides will predominate on the western and southern component of the Transverse Ranges. Seasonal road closures should necessitate thorough reconnaissance as close as possible to the scheduled date of an upcoming rally. Population density, winter runoff, and fog are principle variables for driving events planned along the southern Transverse Range component; seasonality, and ephemeral runoff through summer, the principle variables anywhere along the northern Transverse Range component. From the San Gabriels, eastward, rock debris becomes ever more preponderous.
Overlooking the Pacific Ocean to the south and its intermontane brethren to the north lies the Santa Monica component of the Transverse Ranges (this component is plotted for you above) which spans west to east from the Channel Islands past Universal Studios. This island range, bounded by (clockwise, west to east) the fertile Oxnard Plain, Hidden Valley, the Conejo Valley, and the San Fernando Valley to the north, Los Angeles (proper) to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the south, is arguably the most significant piece of real estate in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. Residents whose domicile lies in the Santa Monicas consists of the region's power elite. Unlike the Northern Transverse Range component, the Santa Monica Range rises in peak elevation from east to west. It has but one celebrated road that traverses it, mostly in its entirety... "Mulholland."
There's no place like Southern California. It's much like it's own country. It's economic clout enables it, in many instances, to set the national agenda. The confluence of shearing tectonic masses in tandem with the synergism of California's rich endowments, and it's unrivaled factor labor productivity shewed the diverse foundation upon which similarly splintered, contradictory, well differentiated forms of car culture would evolve ex post of WW II, and subsequently diffuse elsewhere. As young adults, boomer cohorts cut their teeth dueling, wheel to wheel, across a series of tight, twisty, interconnected roads called Mulholland Raceway, a haven that insulated brave young sports car drivers from cumbersome Highway Patrol cruisers driven by officers hard bitten ferret them out. Synonymous with Van Nuys Boulevard cruise culture, for the last time in human history, every Wednesday evening during the wee hours, car culture transformed this tight menagerie of roads into a place where automobile racing existed in its purest, most innocent form. Called cafe racers, their inevitable attrition would eventually realize the day when motorcyclists would assume this sobreque.
Quite arguably, roads that meander through the California's Transverse Ranges constitute a signal rationalization that justifies the enormous degree of mutual tolerance demanded by those who call this filthy, disgusting, decadent, corrupt cesspool of a metropolis their home. But, ask any sports car guy foolish enough to have left Southern California, he would have to concur: But for its awesome canyon roads, you could flush the rest of it right down the sewer and be none the worst for it.
There's nothing quite like Mulholland Raceway. Nor will there ever be...
"Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part; do thou but thine." ~_Milton, Paradise Lost _~
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