The Radavist

Los Angeles’ riding needs no introduction to the readers of this website. In fact, active readers and followers on our Instagram will recognize some of these spots. When people express an interest in coming to LA to escape the brütal winter months, I kindly oblige, especially when it’s people like Jeff Kendall-Weed. We’ve all seen him riding in videos, but I was curious to witness it in-person. His trip fell in-between a few other photoshoots, so it was going to be tricky, but I made sure to clear a few days of my schedule to take him out and show him some of my favorite trails in Los Angeles. Oh, and he was bringing down a brand new Ibis Cycles Ripmo, a long-travel 29’r, which was just icing on the shred cake!

I often find it ironic that as city dwellers, we spend every waking moment finding ways to escape the very thing that draws us to the city itself. This could be a by-product of a technologically-dependant age, yet people have flocked to cities since this country’s very inception. A lot has changed since the early days of Los Angeles, where orange orchards would stretch for miles upon miles and the hillsides used to glow a bright green. It was before invasive plants took over the hillsides and long before human-error spawned ravenous, almost insatiable forest fires. Yet, here we are trying to make this thing we call civilization work, and at least in some capacity, coexist with the natural beauty that surrounds our unintentional urban sprawl.

The Angeles National Forest is my favorite place in Los Angeles County to get away from it all. Oftentimes that means ducking out of responsibilities, evading work, life and everything else that drives my existence in this plane of tarmac. Sometimes it takes heavy convincing, which in LA usually comes in the form of low-pressure systems and cold fronts. When the clouds are angry, the soil and thus, the trails are happy. It’s an experience not to be missed

Nick Was High in LA on His Purple Haze 160mm Sklar Hardtail
Photos by Kyle Kelley, words by Nicholas Haig-Arack

I first met Adam Sklar a few years ago while riding bikes with a bunch of frame builder friends in Santa Cruz. I was impressed by the character of Sklar’s bikes – those flattened swoops are pretty sweet, can’t deny it – but it was Adam’s personality and lighthearted approach to riding that made me really appreciate his brand. Our paths crossed again in Moab for the most fun week ever and I was convinced that I wanted a bike from Adam. Fast-forward a few months and imagine my stoke when he asked me to do drawings for Sklar Bikes! Since then we’ve been cultivating a cross-country creative partnership, one that emphasizes creativity, exploration, and good times.

Los Angeles has endless dirt routes within the city limits. Today we’re looking at Cherry Canyon!

A Brief on Los Angeles Mountain Bike History with MWBA
Words by Erik Hillard
Photos compiled by Erik Hillard from the MWBA Archives, on diplay now at Mission Workshop LA.

I rode my first mountain bike in the Santa Cruz Mountains while in high school and working at a bike shop in Salinas, CA. It was the early 1990s and by then, local hiking and equestrian anti-bike groups had prevailed and bikes were illegal on single track. There were few places to ride legally and I grew up with tremendous gratitude for legal trails when I found them.

Later I moved near Pasadena, CA and started to explore the adjacent Angeles National Forest. I was amazed at the miles of open trails for mountain bikes. How was access to this amazing forest preserved when so much of California single track was lost for mountain bikes in the 1990s?

Trails need work. All the time and across the globe, there are numerous organizations that rally the troops when work needs to be done on their local singletrack. In LA, one of our organizations is the Mount Wilson Bicycling Association. Year after year, MWBA has been working alongside the Forest Service, IMBA and CORBA to re-open various trails that were closed after the Station Fire ravaged the San Gabriel Mountains in 2009. One such project is extending the Gabrielino Trail from Ken Burton to Switzer’s. If you’re an LA local, these names might sound familiar to you.

The Gabrielino follows a canyon down below Highway 2 and out to the Arroyo. This trail hugs the hillsides of the canyon walls, crosses waterfalls and snakes its way through the sandy, rocky and loose wash. Today, 30+ volunteers spent their Sunday morning workin’ dirt with MWBA. With such big crowds, it’s easy to cover a lot of ground in a single afternoon.

The Angeles National Forest is home to many exceptional trails. Once MWBA, and their volunteers, have worked to open these remaining trails back up, we’ll have even more options for big back-country loops, almost entirely made from singletrack. If you’d like to help out, follow MWBA on Instagram and Facebook!

Thank you to everyone who came to help out today!