Mountain Biking: Hollywood Hills

Hollywood Hills ride. This is one of several rides I can do from my house. I like the fact that I live within biking distance of lots of famous LA landmarks and I try to make a point of getting to know the local territory as much as possible. I rode this on 4/24/2000 evening. Starting from my house, I head south on Vineland, passing our brand new Ralphs supermarket, crossing Ventura Blvd, and going straight across. Then I turn up Wrightwood Drive and ride through residential neighborhoods. There are two left turns to be made with stop signs which in both cases keeps you on Wrightwood Drive. Thomas Guide® ref pg 562 A6.

It's a brutally fast and steep way to get up to Mulholland Drive and it takes me about 10 minutes from bottom to top. Once on Mulholland, for this particular ride, I turn left, heading east. This evening was relatively clear so here's a picture of the wonderful San Fenando Valley, with the Verdugo mountains in the background. You can see Universal Studios in the foreground. San Fernando Valley from Mulholland Drive

Mulholland Drive is home to all sorts of rich and famous people, and some pretty wacky architecture too. Shortly you'll come to a right turn called Torreyson drive, which is a worthwhile detour just to look at the this house shaped somewhat like a flying saucer. You go up here, making a right turn, and keep looking back and up. After about ¼ mile you'll see the house - it's hard to miss.
Meanwhile, back down to Mulholland and keep on going east (right turn). After a mile or so of rolling up and down hill, you get to the top of Runyon Canyon, which is a haven for dog walkers - a large legally offleash dog walking area. Pity about the poop smell.

Sometimes I've ridden down through Runyon Canyon, dodging the dogs and their owners. Today however we're continuing on Mulholland Drive and heading down into the Cahuenga Pass where the 101 freeway cuts through the Santa Monica Mountains. You pass a vista spot where I've always seen Japanese tourists snapping away. Then around 2/3 of the way down, you'll see this on the right. It's an old and very overgrown paved road. This is where I now go. Trail turnoff from Mulholland Drive to Hollywood Sign
You drop down about 1/4 mile and find yourself the wrong side of a locked gate, however there's a clear path to the left of it, and then you're in the turnaround at the top of a street called Hill Park Drive. There's also a dirt track to the right which is unmarked, and the gates are open to it, so I assume it's OK to ride it. After a gentle hill up, you're suddenly confronted with rather a unique view of the Hollywood Bowl. You couldn't see the stage from here of course, but you'd get a good view of the audience and be able to hear everything I'm sure. Hollywood Bowl from behind

The trail suddenly gets steep and single track here and I did take it on one occasion before. I ended up passing a couple of guys who were camping and then found myself trying to clamber down behind a big sign, complete with fountains right at the street entrance to the Hollywood Bowl. It was pretty tough with a bike to deal with! For this ride though I turn back down the dirt road, and continue down Hill Park Drive (got up to 40mph down hill!). The next part is really dreary - head down Highland Av (beware of nasty merge from right) and turn left on Franklin Av. Then, after going under the 101 Freeway, you turn back left (north) on Beechwood Drive and start a slow climb.

You're heading directly for the Hollywood Sign, in fact after about a mile, you pass the original stone gateway (dated 1923) into Hollywoodland, the name of this neighborhood. The Hollywood sign used to say "Hollywoodland" but the -land letters decayed and never got restored. The sign was put up as a promotion for the area, by a realtor, who wanted people to be able to read the sign from Wilshire Blvd. The letters are about 40 feet tall and made of sheet metal.
There's high security around the sign and as this sign indicates, you can't get close to it, although people try. It used to light up at night - a deal struck with the LA Department of Water and Power, in return for their running overhead power lines across Griffith Park. Not sure what happened to the lights. I think I heard the sign got lit up for the Millenium, but I wasn't around to see it.

You pass a little collection of shops and keep on up Beechwood Drive. If you stay on this, you'll end up at Sunset Stables and you're into Griffith Park. I've done this once, but today, I turn off left up Ledgewood Drive. It's steep, but there's an extraordinary house waiting to be looked at, which you'd probably never see if you just drove by it. I noticed it one time I was coming down this hill from the other direction, and always meant to come back to stop and take a closer look. So today I took pictures. We're at 3106 Ledgewood Drive, on the right hand side. Unfortunately, as I look at the pictures, I see that one of them includes a sign saying "no cameras". Oops! So, in respect to the owner, I won't post these pictures for public consumption, but encourage anyone to stop by and take a look.

A little further up the hill, you come to a wierd junction with a total of 4 roads going off in all directions. I'll take the one at 10 o'clock which is Rogerton Drive. More uphill twisty residential streets with much steepness and interesting houses, and eventually it levels out and you're pretty close to the Hollywood Sign. The road does a strange dividing thing for a few hundred feet, then you're suddenly out in the open, looking down on the Hollywood Reservoir.

Now I wanted to take this turning here, which I've done on a previous occassion. It's a pleasant bit of single track which eventually reaches the southern end of the walking track around the reservoir. However since it was getting late, I couldn't on this occasion. The reason is that the LA Department of Water and Power have high security around this reservoir and actually close up the walking track around it at night. The reservoir contains treated water for Hollywood.

The DWP is currently constructing underground tanks at the northern end of the reservoir and there'll be a bypass tunnel to the southern end of the existing reservoir to link up with the existing distribution. The main goal of this is to protect the quality of water which could be affected by anything thrown in the lake, or surface water runoff. It's called the Hollywood Water Quality Improvement Project. [Update: this was all completed in 2002 and now the tanks are fully landscaped].
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From this point, you just sail down the hill, passing a park on the right side full of kids and dogs, and make a left turn onto Arrowhead Drive, which then ends up down at the reservoir level. You go counter clockwise here (right). Even when the track is closed you can still go on this section of road, and continue to the northern end of the reservoir, and then up Lake Hollywood Drive, which is brutally steep but not too long. From here, it's thankfully pretty much downhill all the way home - down Lake Hollywood Drive to Barham, then left on Barham, then right on Cahuenga. This turns into Ventura and then I'm back on Vineland and heading home.

Back to Bike Rides

It's a brutally fast and steep way to get up to Mulholland Drive and it takes me about 10 minutes from bottom to top. Once on Mulholland, for this particular ride, I turn left, heading east. This evening was relatively clear so here's a picture of the wonderful San Fenando Valley, with the Verdugo mountains in the background. You can see Universal Studios in the foreground.
Mulholland Drive is home to all sorts of rich and famous people, and some pretty wacky architecture too. Shortly you'll come to a right turn called Torreyson drive, which is a worthwhile detour just to look at the this house shaped somewhat like a flying saucer. You go up here, making a right turn, and keep looking back and up. After about ¼ mile you'll see the house - it's hard to miss.
Meanwhile, back down to Mulholland and keep on going east (right turn). After a mile or so of rolling up and down hill, you get to the top of Runyon Canyon, which is a haven for dog walkers - a large legally offleash dog walking area. Pity about the poop smell.
Sometimes I've ridden down through Runyon Canyon, dodging the dogs and their owners. Today however we're continuing on Mulholland Drive and heading down into the Cahuenga Pass where the 101 freeway cuts through the Santa Monica Mountains. You pass a vista spot where I've always seen Japanese tourists snapping away. Then around 2/3 of the way down, you'll see this on the right. It's an old and very overgrown paved road. This is where I now go.
You drop down about 1/4 mile and find yourself the wrong side of a locked gate, however there's a clear path to the left of it, and then you're in the turnaround at the top of a street called Hill Park Drive. There's also a dirt track to the right which is unmarked, and the gates are open to it, so I assume it's OK to ride it. After a gentle hill up, you're suddenly confronted with rather a unique view of the Hollywood Bowl. You couldn't see the stage from here of course, but you'd get a good view of the audience and be able to hear everything I'm sure.