Mountain bikers struggle for their piece of the trails at Portuguese Bend
Lamenting the lost
Horse trainer Chris Margrave gives Chuncky a workout at the Portuguese Bend Riding Club. Photo by David Rosenfeld Horse trainer Chris Margrave gives Chuncky a workout at the Portuguese Bend Riding Club. Photo by David Rosenfeld
Biking at Portuguese Bend can be grueling and not for the beginning mountain biker. Characterized by steep switchbacks on slalom-like trails and deep ravines that filter down toward Abalone Cove, the area is a down-hiller’s dream. After a screaming descent, bikers have a lengthy climb ahead on a fire road on the way back to the top.
A ride here often leaves the unprepared swearing to never return after the long ascent, but it usually fades with the thought of that remarkable downhill run after the leg muscles relax.
On a ride with a group of long-time bikers on a recent Sunday, talk turned often to the trails they can no longer ride. Braswell pauses at one of the signs with the symbol of a mountain biker crossed out. “We’re gonna get this one back,” he said.
Braswell, 67, is a testament to the benefits of outdoor exercise. He is a long-time trail runner and mountain biker, beginning near the inception of the sport in the early 1980s. He subsequently left his job as an aerospace engineer at TRW and bought a bike shop in the late 1980s on Pacific Coast Highway in Redondo Beach. The shop since closed, but Braswell’s passion for mountain biking remained.
“We used to be able to ride whatever trail we wanted,” said Berry Barbour, a 46-year-old biker in the group. “There were never any issues with it. We never had issues with hikers or horses.”
Barbour said the trouble started when some in the habitat community accused bikers of destroying wildlife and being dangerous to hikers and horseback riders. In the nearly 30 years Barbour shared the trails at Portuguese Bend, he says he never personally had any issues.
“There were a select few in there who had some scary experiences,” Barbour said. “That developed into an us-versus-them thing. We should all have equal access. We should all be able to share the trails. They should have no more rights than we do.”
It’s easy to see why some trail management is necessary when a mountain biker comes screaming around a corner. Yet those in the biking community feel they were unjustly shortchanged in favor of horseback riders who own property in the area. Horses, they argue, have as much or more impact on trails as bicycles yet have not been banned from as many trails.
Down at the Portuguese Bend Riding Club, Laura Feldman, the general manager, said she hasn’t heard of too many problems with mountain bikers. Relations have been mostly positive, she said.
“When we come across bikers, most of them, unless they are brand new to the neighborhood, 90 percent of the time it works out well,” she said. “You can’t help accidents like someone going really fast that comes across a corner and you’re up the tail of a horse.”
Nestled among the exclusive Portuguese Bend community, a visit to the riding club feels like a trip to the era before residential development on the peninsula. The main stables with the Spanish-style courtyard and terracotta roofs originally belonged to the Vanderlip family.
Where attendants lived above the stables, Feldman now occupies an apartment. The club houses 40 to 50 horses at one time, from which many riders access the local trails. She said horseback riders have concerns with getting to the trailhead from expanded development in the neighborhood.
“Now you’re running into fences all the time and people who have built out,” she said. “We still have access to trails, but a lot of it is gone. It’s still relatively easy to get to, yet a little more difficult than it used to be.”
Hikers such as Elizabeth Kennedy, who leads nature walks at Portuguese Bend with the Sierra Club, help educate the public about the natural habitat. She points out the native plants and threatened species like the coastal cactus wren and California gnatcatcher that thrives on coastal sagebrush. Both sagebrush and cactus along the coast are rare finds in Southern California these days.
“It’s not just a Stairmaster,” Kennedy said. “It’s a great way to get a sense of the history of the place, knowing you are traveling on land that’s passable and being preserved.”
Another hiker the bike group met on the trail that Sunday didn’t have as much of a problem with mountain bikers as he said he did against unleashed dogs, something that’s prohibited in the park and a sore subject for another story.