Mountain bikers struggle for their piece of the trails at Portuguese Bend
A free-for-all
Troy Braswell, a long-time mountain biker at Portuguese Bend, points out the dramatic scenery. Photo by David Rosenfeld
Long before the preserve was created, people had been coming to this landslide-prone area with its majestic views for decades to ride horses, hike and bike. The area supported cattle ranches and farms when an East Coast investment group lead by financier Frank Vanderlip bought 16,000 acres in 1913, including the site of the current Portuguese Bend community. The land was sporadically developed in the century that followed, but the combination of its remoteness and shaky geological underpinning allowed it to remain some of the most untouched land remaining in Los Angeles County.
When mountain biking become popular in the 1990s, it didn’t take long for the local biking community to consider Portuguese Bend its backyard. BMX free riders built jumps and small tracks. Mountain bikers carved berms into steep switchbacks and relished in the sheer drop-offs.
For thrill seekers, Portuguese Bend offered endless possibilities on ungoverned property. Some of the younger riders, frustrated with being cut-off from so many of the current trails, are still blazing their own routes in remote sections – something Braswell says gives the biking community a bad name.
Lots of bikers built new trails in the early days because the place wasn’t managed in any formal sense. Building jumps and new trails fit with the kind of freedom that had attracted bikers to the sport in the first place.
Mountain biking, by its nature, resonates for people with a strong sense of independence and an equal love for speed and the outdoors. It’s relatively free, except for the cost of a bike and a ride to the trailhead, and it offers a chance for heart pounding exercise, high rates of speed with looming dangers around every corner, all outdoors. And at Portuguese Bend, add another dimension: the amazing view.
Bikers may have altered the landscape at Portuguese Bend but they also provided many hikers with new routes and gave the place life and notoriety throughout Southern California. Trails are like arteries. Without them a wilderness is difficult to explore. But too many trails will choke an area out.
Mountain biker Mike Torres, from San Pedro, navigates a narrow switchback on Rattlesnake Trail at the PV Nature Preserve. Photo by David Rosenfeld
Eva Cicoria served on the 16-member Public Use Master Plan Committee that heard public testimony and made recommendations to the city council in 2008. Cicoria opposed mountain biking on much of the preserve for the way bike trails damaged habitat and the possible dangers bikes posed at high speeds.
“I can only say that things have improved quite a bit since the trails plan was put into place and a ranger was hired to enforce the rules,” she said.
The tension between trails and the protection of wild places goes back to the very origins of the conservation movement in America. Henry David Thoreau, during his sojourn at Walden Pond in 1845, remarked upon how quickly his presence altered the pristine area.
“It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side,” Thoreau wrote. “The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels.”
Thoreau, one of the nation’s first conservationists, would not have been keen on the bombing-down-the-path nature of mountain biking. Neither are his contemporary counterparts.
The local chapter of the Sierra Club takes a firm stance on mountain biking. The group supports the current trail use plan, but opposes efforts to open more trails to bikes, said Al Sattler, chairman of the South Bay and PV regional Sierra Club.
“I know some people who will not go hiking in the area because they’re fearful of a confrontation with mountain bikes,” Sattler said. “For a while it was like the Wild West out there.”
An abundance of trails impacts wildlife habitat by creating more opportunities to erode landscape, especially on steep sections, Sattler said.
“The group isn’t against mountain biking. We just feel it should be done in appropriate areas,” Sattler said. “There’s a balance between use and restoration because people have to get to see the habitat areas to appreciate and value them. At the same time, you can’t love it to death.”