Big Bear Rim Roads

A 555 km loop

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Why this ride

Built for flow, views and useful stops rather than navigation busywork. A 555 km loop that starts and ends near Garden Grove, about 10 h 05 of riding. On the way it passes Rancho Palos Verdes, near Camarillo and near Lake Los Angeles. The climb of the day is San Pedro. It tops out at about 1,150 m.

Roadbook

1. Fuel stop near Garden Grove fuel

   Fuel at 0 km.

2. San Pedro pass

   The road out to Point Fermin ends at a Victorian lighthouse built in the 1870s, a wooden tower with gingerbread trim that once guided ships into San Pedro Bay. It stands in a cliff-top park at the very southern tip of Los Angeles, and beside it the land has been slowly sliding into the sea for a century, leaving a jumble of broken streets and foundations known as Sunken City.

   San Pedro is the port of Los Angeles, a working harbour town of cranes, container ships and fishing boats, with a strong identity shaped by generations of Croatian, Italian and Mexican fishermen and dockworkers. The Vincent Thomas Bridge, a green suspension bridge, arches over the harbour, and the battleship Iowa, a museum ship, is moored on the waterfront.

   Up on the hill, in Angels Gate Park, the Korean Bell of Friendship, a huge bronze bell in an ornate pavilion, was given to the United States by South Korea in 1976. It is rung on a few special days each year, and the view over the ocean and Catalina Island is superb.

   For riders, Palos Verdes Drive, the coastal road that winds around the peninsula, is one of the best rides in the LA area, with cliffs, coves and ocean views. The road is well kept for the most part, but it shifts in places due to landslides. Watch for cyclists, who are numerous, and for police.

   Down on the waterfront, the big fish market restaurant serves trays of fried and grilled seafood at long communal tables, loud, messy and very San Pedro. Fuel stations line Gaffey Street on the way out.

3. Rancho Palos Verdes scenic

   The Palos Verdes Peninsula is a big block of hills pushing out into the Pacific at the south-western corner of Los Angeles, and Rancho Palos Verdes wraps around its southern edge. The coast road here, Palos Verdes Drive South and its continuation west, is about as scenic as a short ride in the LA basin gets: bluffs dropping to the sea, coves, kelp beds, and on a clear day the long grey shape of Santa Catalina Island floating on the horizon.

   The land here is restless. Around Portuguese Bend, the peninsula is slowly sliding towards the ocean, part of an ancient landslide complex that reactivated in the mid-twentieth century and has accelerated dramatically in recent years. The road through the slide zone ripples and buckles, is patched constantly and can be rough, with sudden dips and uneven surfaces; slow down and stay alert. The movement famously claimed the Wayfarers Chapel, a glass church designed by Lloyd Wright, son of Frank Lloyd Wright, which had to close in 2024 and be taken apart.

   The more stable parts of the coast are lovely. Point Vicente has a lighthouse and an interpretive centre on the cliffs, and from December to April it is one of the best places on the Southern California coast to watch grey whales migrating between Alaska and Mexico. Abalone Cove and the tide pools below the bluffs are worth a scramble if you have time and decent boots. The peninsula is green, full of eucalyptus, pines and coastal sage, and the air smells of salt and flowers.

   For a scenic stop, park at one of the pull-offs and watch the sun go down over the Pacific, ideally on a weekday when the traffic is lighter. Weekend afternoons bring crowds of cyclists, sightseers and residents, and parking can be tight. Fuel and groceries are available in Rancho Palos Verdes and the neighbouring towns of the South Bay. The ride back towards Los Angeles can be slow in rush hour, so time your departure carefully.

4. Photo stop near Camarillo photo

   Photo stop near Camarillo, about halfway.

5. Food stop near Lake Los Angeles food

   Food at 354 km, roughly 7 hours into the riding.

6. Los Angeles / Southern California return swim

   Joshua trees and creosote bush spread out toward a horizon cut by the San Bernardino Mountains to the south, and on a clear morning the snow on the higher ridges looks borrowed from another state. Adelanto, a town of some thirty-odd thousand, is the sensible place to sort fuel and a breakfast burrito; Victorville sits right next to it with more of everything.

   This is where the Big Bear loops begin their long haul upward. Riders coming from the Los Angeles side usually cross the mountains through Cajon Pass, drop into the desert, and then turn back up toward the rim, so the flat ground here is a kind of warm-up lap, a lull before the road starts to climb through pines. The Mojave River, which spends most of its life underground, makes a long arc nearby, and old Route 66 once strung together the little desert towns along it. If you have an appetite for a detour, the National Trails Highway still carries traces of that road.

   Be honest about the weather. Summer afternoons out here are hot enough that the bike wants to sit in the shade, and spring brings wind that leans on you from the west with real conviction. Early morning is the right hour to leave: the air is cold and clean, the light is low and long, and you reach the mountains before the heat does. In winter, check the pass conditions before you climb, because the rim roads above can ice over while the desert floor sits in sunshine.

   The finish of a day here tends to be quiet. You come back down to a plain full of warehouses and solar fields, with the last light turning the mountains pink, and the feeling is of having been somewhere genuinely high. Water is easy to buy in town, and it is worth carrying more than you think you need, because the gap between gas stations can feel longer on a hot road than it looks on a map.

7. View Park-Windsor Hills finish

   Up on the slopes of the Baldwin Hills, in the middle of the Los Angeles basin, View Park and Windsor Hills look out over the city in every direction: downtown's towers to the north-east, the Hollywood sign and the San Gabriels to the north, the ocean and the airport to the west. It is a leafy, quiet neighbourhood of curving streets and handsome 1920s to 1950s houses, and since the 1960s it has been one of the most affluent Black communities in the United States, sometimes called the Black Beverly Hills. Ray Charles lived here, and the area has been home to generations of doctors, judges, musicians and athletes.

   A strange thing to see next door: the Inglewood Oil Field, one of the largest urban oil fields in the country, still has hundreds of pump jacks nodding away on the hills just to the north, between houses and parks. Around and above them, the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area and the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook offer trails and big views, and the overlook's steep staircase, cut into the hillside, is a favourite workout for Angelenos. At sunset, the whole basin turns gold and then glitters with lights.

   Big Bear feels a world away from here. The Rim of the World Highway, Route 18, runs along the crest of the San Bernardino Mountains at around two thousand metres, with drop-offs, tight curves and views over the desert and the basin, and Big Bear Lake sits in a pine-forested valley that gets snow in winter. Coming back, you drop down to the valley and then fight your way across the freeways of the Inland Empire and Los Angeles, which can be slow, hot and stressful at rush hour. Lane splitting is legal in California, which helps, but stay alert.

   Practically, everything is close: fuel, food and services along La Brea and Crenshaw, and Inglewood, home to SoFi Stadium and the Forum, right next door. Leimert Park, a few minutes away, is a centre of Black arts and culture, with galleries, music and cafés, and it is a good place to end the day with a meal.

   If you have energy, ride up to the top of the hill, watch the planes line up for LAX and the sun drop into the Pacific, and know that this neighbourhood has some of the best city views in Los Angeles.

8. Back to Big finish

   Garden Grove sits in the middle of Orange County's great flat basin, a tapestry of low-rise suburbs between Disneyland to the north and the beach towns to the south-west. The label on this stop only says Big, presumably short for Big Bear, so what I can honestly describe is the setting, which is the low, built-up plain from which the long ride into the mountains begins. The San Bernardino range stands to the north-east, and on a clear winter morning its snow-covered ridges seem to float above the haze.

   The city has a character of its own. It has one of the largest Vietnamese communities outside Vietnam, centred on nearby Little Saigon in Westminster and Garden Grove, where shopping malls and streets of restaurants sell pho, banh mi and strong iced coffee with condensed milk. Early in the day, the bakeries open with trays of fresh bread, and the smell drifts out to the street. The big glass church that once belonged to a famous televangelist, now a Catholic cathedral, stands on the edge of town, a surprising presence among low buildings.

   The riding is simple urban work. Boulevards run in grids with a light at nearly every block, the freeways run fast but crowded, and traffic piles up on weekdays from early morning. Lane splitting is legal in California, but common sense matters. To reach the mountains, riders usually take the freeways east, then climb up Highway 330 or 18 into the San Bernardino range, a transition from sprawl to pine forest in about two hours. Go early, preferably before 7 am, to avoid the worst of the traffic.

   Everything you need is here, since the city has about 175,000 people. Fuel stations stand at nearly every junction, and Fountain Valley, to the south, has even more shops. Take a hot drink for the mountain portion, because the air at Big Bear, at about 6,700 feet, is far cooler than in the basin. Spring and autumn offer the most pleasant weather, and Santa Ana wind days in autumn can be hot, dry and gusty.

Where this sits

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