Surveying the Cross

Tucked just beyond Baxter Drive is a peaceful yet strenuous hiking trail that extends three miles up into the Santa Monica Mountains that surround Pepperdine’s Malibu campus.

It is well known to local adventurers as the “hike to the cross,” aptly named to describe the wooden cross that meets hikers as they reach the top of the trek. Destroyed by the Woolsey Fire that devastated the local landscape last November, the small structure was replaced on December 1, 2018, by the brothers of the Sigma Chi fraternity, who carried the 20-foot-tall cross in pieces up the trail in honor of Alaina Housley, a first-year Seaver College student who was tragically killed in the shooting at Borderline Bar and Grill on November 7. In the foreground, Housley’s parents, Hannah (’97) and Arik (’96), who serves as the Sigma Chi alumni advisor, steal a quiet moment at the top of the hill following the reflective hike.

^{Video Still: Moises Barba (’18)}