Mountain biking Little Santa Anita Canyon (Old Mount Wilson trail)

Here's a video of me mountain biking the lower section of the Old Mount Wilson trail that runs through Little Santa Anita Canyon from the city of Sierra Madre to Mount Wilson:

Some people use a car shuttle to just do a downhill ride, which involves a lot of driving. Others start in Altadena, climb the Toll Road to Mt. Wilson, ride down this trail, and then bike along streets back to Altadena. I pushed/rode my bike up about a half a mile past First Water (about 2 miles and 1600' of gain) and then rode back the way I came.

There are a lot of hikers on this trail and there's also a lot of exposure, so be very careful. As you might guess from the video, I didn't try the switchback with the fence since it's a long way down. There are a few rock gardens, which also coincide with locations with steep drop-offs. I do part of a couple of these and then walk the rest. I'm going to guess that doing it that way makes this trail mid-intermediate; doing the whole thing probably makes it low advanced, but YMMV.

Rather than using a helmet cam like most others, I carried my camera around my neck on its strap. Then, I put a shirt with a hole in it over that, and put the camera lens through the hole. The shirt reduce somewhat the sideways movement of the camera. This is a step up from my past videos in which I simply held the camera in one hand and steered and braked with the other. In at least one recorded case (Cowles Mountain), that led to a spill.

Location

United States

See map: Google Maps