Hiking to the Hollywood sign, or: The Amish would be puking.

My friend Katey decided that she wanted to hike to the Hollywood sign. Charlie and Annie were completely on board. It was probably 7:30 pm when she suggested doing so, and they wanted to leave right away. I wasn’t feeling very well, though, and I didn’t want to go at first. However, Katey soon convinced me to come with, so I went and got changed. We wanted another guy to come with us, and I suggested we invited Mackenzie. I called him and told him what we were doing and that he should come. After some hesitation, he decided that we would come with us.

We all met in the lobby just after 8 pm, and headed to Hollywood in Katey’s car. We sang along to the music in her car, laughed, and just enjoyed each other’s company. After about a half hour drive, we arrived at the bottom of the trail. We parked on a residential street so we wouldn’t look sketchy. And then our hike began.

We followed the signs that pointed the way, and it wasn’t long before we got a full view of the LA lights. We stopped so that I could snap a few pictures.

My favorite picture from the night.

We then continued on our way, staying quiet and discrete, as to not to cause any problems. The trail twisted in all kinds of crazy ways, but Annie had pulled a map up on her phone, so we had some direction of where we were going.

At one point, we realized that there was a man on the top of one of the peaks. We couldn’t tell if he was facing toward us or away from us, though. We then noticed that he had a horse with him, though, so we thought he must be taking a little night ride. We continued on our ascent, looping behind the guard tower, which had bright lights all around it. Once around the corner, we met a fence with a sign warning against trespassing. For a minute we couldn’t tell where we were, and then we realized that the sign was right past the fence it front of it—the trail had taken us behind the sign.

We spent a few minutes taking in the city lights, and I shot some more pictures.

As Charlie noted: "There's so many freaking lights! The Amish would be puking right now!"

Charlie really wanted to go down to the sign, but we were worried about getting in trouble. The sign told of 24-hour surveillance, and it didn’t seem like a good idea to risk it.

Given that it had taken us nearly 45 minutes to reach the sign, we figured we should start heading back down. We walked in quiet for most of the way. Charlie got a little bit a head of us, so I sped up a bit to catch up with him. He told me that there was a guy on a ridge above us, so we should just keep walking as to not look suspicious. We walked in silence, with the other three a little bit behind us. During that time, they saw a man lifting his arms toward the sky and turning around, but I never did.

All of a sudden, Charlie and I heard a guy talking really loud behind us. I asked Charlie if that was Mackenzie. It was weird, though, because we had all been so quiet this whole time. I then turned around to see four dark shadows. Someone had joined our three friends. Completely confused, I stopped to wait for them. Charlie stopped, too. As they got closer, I saw that the addition figure was a man with a backpack, walking stick, and serious beard. He said some parting words and took a different path than we did.

Mackenzie began to explain to us what had happened. He said that he realized there was someone a little bit behind them. He though to himself, what would my dad do? and decided to say hello. He called out a hello to the figure. No response. He said the next 30 seconds were the scariest of his life as he called out hello a second time. This time, the man responded and began talking with them. Apparently he tries to make the hike two or three times a week.

As we were nearing the end of our hike, we turned around to look at the sign. Because it’s not lit up at night, I did what I could to snap a picture of it.

There it is... THE Hollywood sign.

We had certainly hiked a long way. Once we made it back to Katey’s car, we got inside and breathed a sigh of relief. We could finally talk at a normal volume again.

Katey had never seen any of Hollywood, so we drove down Sunset blvd and Hollywood blvd just for kicks. By this time, it was after 11 pm, and we were really hungry. Because Hollywood is kind of sketchy, we decided just to go to In-N-Out back in La Mirada.

Once there, we got burgers, fries, and shakes, and laughed about what we had just experienced. We tried to rationalize who were all the figures that we saw. At a later time, Mackenzie made this assertion regarding the experience:

“The man who we saw with his horse just standing and walking was a different guy. The most logical reason for a man to be on a horse ride at 10 in the evening on the hills of Hollywood was to kind of do a round up of the area. He belonged to... that horse place down in the little valley there and was making sure all was clear after sunset. After we came back down, the man with his hands raised worshipping who knows what was the same man who we saw walking up from behind us (thanks to Annie's hawk eyes). He said he does the hike at least 3 times a week, so naturally he would know the in's and out's of the trail—shortcuts and such. If he hiked often, I think he could be quiet if he really wanted to be. The mystery still is why he would be so secretive with all black on...”

We will never know the truth behind these mysterious figures. However, there is one thing I do know: none of us are likely to forget that night anytime soon.