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Bikes and Hikes LA aims to give tourists and locals a different — and eco-friendly — view of Los Angeles with guided bike and hiking tours through the city’s most famous locations.
For most people who visit Los Angeles, traveling by bike doesn’t usually come to mind. But Bikes and Hikes LA, a West Hollywood-based outdoor tour company, hopes to change that.
In my six years living in the Los Angeles area, I’d certainly never explored the city by bike — so I decided to embrace my inner tourist and head out on Bikes and Hikes’ 12-mile Beverly Hills tour.
For three hours, as the group of 12 or so tourists and I zipped through vibrant West Hollywood, glamorous Rodeo Drive, and the opulent, celebrity-filled Holmby Hills neighborhood, our tour guide regaled us with colorful anecdotes and stories behind the landmarks — from old Hollywood’s gangster roots, to a tour bus’s discovery of Michael Jackson’s death, to the movie-worthy history behind Greystone Mansion. (I won’t give it all away, but it involves a mysterious alleged murder-suicide and oil tycoons.)
“Beverly Hills doesn’t need to market its tourism,” said our tour guide, Erik, at one point. “It’s like a secret.”
Beverly Hills’ tourist attractions, and the stories behind them, really do feel like hidden gems, and there’s no better way to discover them than on an e-bike.
This is the goal of Bikes and Hikes — not to perform a memorized script or quickly breeze past L.A.’s highlights, but to help guests really experience them.
“When you're on your bike, you smell it, you feel the heat, you can hear the sounds of the people walking by, you're feeling the bumps on the pavement,” says Kris Elder, manager and director of activities and events at Bikes and Hikes. “You're really taking in the environment that you're in and really getting a much better feel for the city. It is much more memorable.”
But apart from helping tourists see L.A. in a new light, Bikes and Hikes is on a mission to help people discover the city in an eco-friendly way.
Although tourism plays a substantial role in boosting the economies of cities like Los Angeles, it can come with a significant environmental toll, from increased pollution, use of natural resources, loss of biodiversity, and greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
Despite this, tourism is still very much needed, Kris says.
“If you don't know a place exists and feel some sort of a connection to it, you're much less likely to care what happens to it,” he says.
And in the 15 years since its founding, Bikes and Hikes has worked to fill a void of sustainable tourism in Los Angeles.
After starting off small with just a handful of guests on each tour, the company has grown both in its popularity and its offerings. While some smaller companies that focus on specific areas like Santa Monica have popped up in recent years, Kris says that Bikes and Hikes is still the biggest tour operator as far as eco-tourism is concerned. “In L.A., no one else does what we do,” he says.
Over the years, the push for sustainable tourism has only grown, Kris says. The pandemic motivated people to spend more time outside, a trend that’s continued since the global health crisis, he says.
Nowadays roughly 500 people explore L.A. by bike with the company each month, while 1,500 participate in their hikes. Kris tells me that the Beverly Hills tour that I went on is the most popular bike tour, while the express Hollywood Sign hike is the most in-demand of the hike options.
Bikes and Hikes doesn’t limit itself to just tours, either, and it regularly hosts private events, some of which reach upwards of 300 people. It also works with numerous tourism bureaus to help visitors experience L.A. the eco-friendly way.
When you're on your bike, you smell it, you feel the heat, you can hear the sounds of the people walking by, you're feeling the bumps on the pavement. You're really taking in the environment that you're in, and really getting a much better feel for the city. It is much more memorable.
– Kris Elder, manager and director of activities and events at Bikes and Hikes
Although Bikes and Hikes has become an important part of the sustainable tourism ecosystem in Los Angeles, it takes more than just individual companies to make a difference.
“You also need the partnership of the city in order to make it more accessible,” Kris says.
Local governments have made an effort to support sustainable tourism, Kris explains, pointing to West Hollywood’s push to increase its protected bike lanes, and the recent passage of Measure HLA, which requires L.A. to add 238 miles of protected bike lanes and hundreds more miles of unprotected lanes.
The City of L.A.’s Tourism Master Plan even has an emphasis on sustainable and responsible tourism. Getting tourists out of their cars is one recommendation in the plan.
However, more work is needed, and while in many ways, Los Angeles has a reputation for being environmentally friendly, it’s difficult to support sustainable tourism in such a sprawling and car-centric city.
Although Kris says he’s seen a vast improvement in the nearly 20 years that he’s lived in the area, with more people getting outside and using eco-friendly transportation like bikes or scooters, the biggest challenge still lies in coordinating efforts throughout the county: With over 88 cities in L.A. County, municipalities need to work together to make sustainable tourism more accessible, he says.
Some streets that run through multiple cities, like Santa Monica Boulevard, have bike lanes along only certain portions of the road, and many existing bike lanes need added protection, he says. Improving public transportation — not only for tourists, but also for locals who need it — is also key, Kris says.
Although the focus at Bikes and Hikes remains on its bike and hike tours, the company is working to expand its mission and grow its footprint. Its offerings include rock climbing, kayaking, paddleboarding, and even beach parties. “Anything that is eco and outside, we do,” Kris says.
It even serves areas beyond L.A., from Santa Barbara down to San Diego, and out to Joshua Tree. Kris hopes that the company will continue growing, possibly even establishing another location in Las Vegas or Miami.
For now, though, Bikes and Hikes will continue fulfilling the biking and hiking dreams of locals and tourists. For some people, that’s visiting the Hollywood Sign. For others, maybe it’s biking down the boardwalk from Santa Monica into Venice.
“You get to live their excitement,” Kris says. “I get to experience L.A. in a new way, every day.”
With Bikes and Hikes, I too got to experience L.A. in a new way.
Growing up in New Jersey, my idea of L.A. looked a lot like Beverly Hills — glamorous and filled with celebrities. Though I now know that’s just a small speck of what Los Angeles has to offer, my time with Bikes and Hikes took me back to that glossy picture of Los Angeles. When my tour guide pointed out that Greystone Mansion was not only the scene of a murder, but also one of the sets for “Gilmore Girls,” I’ll admit that I audibly gasped.
“If you come with us, you are going to experience L.A., you're going to see it as it is,” Kris says.
“Being on a bike or a hike, it forces you to engage. You can't just sit back and relax. You're participating.”
