A Saturday In Hacienda Heights: Ridge, Temple, Congee, Repeat
August 6, 2026
August 6, 2026
Most weekend guides to the San Gabriel Valley send you sprawling. Alhambra for dim sum, Arcadia for the arboretum, Rowland Heights for hot pot, and you burn half the day on the 60. Hacienda Heights does something quieter and stranger. Inside a two-mile stretch of Colima Road, you can climb a 575-acre ridge with views to Catalina, sit through a Saturday chant at the largest Buddhist monastery in the Western Hemisphere, and finish with a bowl of century egg congee, all before the freeway starts to fill.
That is the thesis of this post. The Colima corridor is not a strip mall spine to be endured. It is the reason Saturdays here work.
Schabarum Regional Park is open 6:00 a.m.–8:00 p.m., seven days a week, with vehicle entry running $7 per car on weekends and holidays, $5 for seniors and disabled, and free on weekdays. If you live in the neighborhood, you already know the trick: weekday mornings are free. What most people miss is that a Saturday sunrise arrival, before the booth is staffed, is often free too, and the trailhead is empty.
The park sits at 17250 E. Colima Road, and the ridge earns its reputation on winter mornings. Its ridge-top location grants 360-degree views of the San Gabriel Mountains, Puente Hills, and far-off Catalina on exceptionally clear winter mornings.
For a Saturday that still leaves time for temple and breakfast, skip the 10-mile grind and take the shorter combo:
| Loop | Length | Time | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stable Loop | 2.5 mi | ~2 hrs | Paved to dirt, mild grade, family-friendly |
| Schabarum + Purple Sage out-and-back | 4–5 mi | ~2.5 hrs | Full ridge views, exposed |
| Schabarum + Purple Sage + Powder Canyon full loop | 10 mi | 4+ hrs | Committed hike, shade on Powder Canyon descent |
The park is a 575-acre facility with 75 acres developed for walking, hiking, picnics, youth camping, soccer and tennis. Youth tennis lessons are offered year-round and exercise classes are free of charge. There is a new "Life Trail" exercise area, a federally protected blue-line stream and the remaining acres have been left in their natural state, crisscrossed with hiking, biking and horseback riding trails that connect to the historic Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail.
Two practical notes locals learn the hard way. There is not a lot of shade, so bring a hat and sunscreen. There are picnic tables that fill up with family groups. There are snakes and mountain lions, so be mindful. The Purple Sage stretch in particular is exposed south-facing chaparral, and by 10 a.m. in July it is not the trail you want.
From the Schabarum trailhead it is a five-minute drive up into the northern Puente Hills to FGS Hsi Lai Temple, 3456 Glenmark Drive. Hours are 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. daily.
Two reasons Saturday morning is the right window. First, Saturday services put the monks in chant, which changes the entire feel of the courtyard. Second, the crowds that show up for festivals and Lunar New Year are not there. During peak days the parking situation gets serious enough that shuttle buses run from Round 1 at the former Puente Hills Mall site to the temple during Lunar New Year. On a normal Saturday, you can park on site and walk in.
A few things worth knowing before you go:
For residents who have driven past the gate for a decade without stopping, the Saturday move is: hike first, arrive at the temple sweaty and grateful, take the docent-led tour if one is running, then head down the hill to Colima for food. The order matters. You do not want to eat first.
The Colima Road food corridor is what people mean when they say the food in Hacienda Heights is underrated. Not one flagship restaurant, but a mile of small operators that have quietly outlasted their trendier neighbors in Rowland Heights and Diamond Bar. Some notes on the ones worth building a Saturday around.
Delicious Food Corner at 17170 Colima Rd, Ste H, is the congee stop. The kitchen slow-cooks Cantonese-style congee from morning open, and the menu extends into Hong Kong-café territory: baked pork chop rice, macaroni soup, condensed milk toast. It sits directly across from the Schabarum trailhead, which makes it the logical post-hike breakfast, and the health score is an A. Get the pork and preserved egg congee, add an order of Chinese donut, split a lemon iced tea.
85°C Bakery sits in the same plaza. If you have kids in the car and want to keep moving, it is a five-minute pastry-and-sea-salt-coffee stop.
Cindy's Kitchen at 16409 Colima Rd is a Taiwanese hole-in-the-wall. Two things to know: it is closed Tuesdays, and it recently changed hands, with new staff and refreshed decor as of 2026. Regulars are still calibrating whether the beef noodle soup is the same. Go, order it, form your own opinion.
Yakiya at 17188 Colima Rd, Suite C, on the Colima and Azusa corner, is the nighttime pivot. The kitchen uses high-grade cuts of beef from Japan and the U.S. grilled at your table, with smoke-free downdraft vents and a room built around warm woods, brass and leather. This is not a walk-in. Reserve, and treat it as the anchor of a date-night version of this itinerary rather than the lunch stop.
For a lunch that goes bigger than congee, three names come up repeatedly on local lists:
If Mexican seafood is the craving, Ostioneria Colima at 1136 S Hacienda Blvd serves the full aguachile-and-ceviche menu that the SGV corridor is not usually known for.
The itinerary above ends by 1 p.m., which leaves the afternoon open. A few resident-tested moves:
The through-line of the day is that you never had to leave a two-mile radius. That is the argument for Hacienda Heights that the portals do not make when they list a home here. The freeway access is real, but the reason people stay is that Saturday does not require the freeway at all.
The neighborhood is changing faster than a Yelp list can keep up with. Kitchens change hands. The Patriarch's Shrine opens this summer. New plazas keep filling in the gaps between Fullerton Road and Azusa Avenue. If you have lived here five years and have not walked into Delicious Food Corner, or ten years and have not sat through a Saturday chant at Hsi Lai, that is the weekend to fix.
And when the day comes that you are thinking about what your home here is actually worth, or whether the plaza-adjacent pocket you live in is trading differently than the streets up by the temple, that is a call worth making to someone who spends their weekends on Colima too. Rene & Andrea Realty works this corridor, knows which streets in Hacienda Heights are seeing the most activity, and can put a real number on your house without the guesswork. Get a Free Home Valuation — Call or Text Rene & Andrea.
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