Sport And Biking Talk: Epic descent of Mt. Wilson near Los Angeles

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Epic descent of Mt. Wilson near Los Angeles

No, that’s not Peru. It’s just outside L.A.

Brian Kennedy, aka BKXC on YouTube, is a friend of Mtbr who travels the world to explore the best mountain bike trails. Known for his high quality, stabilized video, Kennedy talks viewers through his rides with unbridled enthusiasm. Here’s his latest, the epic descent of Mt. Wilson near Los Angeles.

Kennedy says he’d been hearing rumblings for a while about some pretty good singletrack just outside of L.A. that included 5000 feet of descending. He had to see it for myself. “So I hooked up with Chris from Mt. Wilson MTB Adventure and caught the 10 a.m. shuttle on a busy Sunday morning for $ 20,” explained Kennedy. “But sweet L.A. singletrack comes at the price of sharing the trail with a ton of hikers that are also drawn to the mountain. If I ever come back I’m taking the 6 a.m. shuttle.”

Here’s Part 1 of this two-part video series.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cZjR_QiDd8

“To help minimize the conflict between hikers and bikers, we all rode with bear bells from the Mount Wilson Mountain Biking Association,” said Kennedy. “This helps alert hikers that we’re coming and it worked great all day long. Even though we saw a lot of hikers we still got to enjoy the descent in all of its glory.”

This map shows the riding area in question that’s just outside Altadena, California.

“It turns out the mountain biking on Mt. Wilson is epic,” continued Kennedy. “So epic I had to cut this ride into two videos. It took us about 2.5 hours for us to get down the 13.6-mile route with lots of breaks and only 859 feet of climbing.”

Here’s video No. 2.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB7F7kmvbTQ

“This is what most people call the “Frontside” ride,” said Kennedy. “There are a lot of other rides that Chris offers, and the one I want to do next is called ‘The Chilao Epic.’ It’s 26 miles with 11,000 feet of descending and 3,300 feet of climbing. A 5-hour all-day epic.”

We definitely look forward to seeing those videos, too.

For more great riding action on Mtbr, check out our video page.