2 min
Overview
One of our 16 Ways to See the Hollywood Sign This little-known hiking route takes you to some of the best front-facing views of the Hollywood Sign AND won’t put you into conflict with Hollywoodland residents complaining about increased traffic on their narrow, winding, circa-1920s streets — it’s a win-win for visitors who want to get in a decent hike with their Hollywood Sign selfies and for residents who’d prefer to keep rideshare traffic off their streets. People are always looking for ways to hike to the Hollywood Sign. Honestly, if you’ve spent more than a day or so living and hiking in Los Angeles, someone’s going to ask you the best way to get to that old real estate advertisement, so you might as well be prepared. If you want to get to the summit of Mount Lee (where the Hollywood Sign is located), a trek up Brush (Bronson) Canyon is a relatively lengthy but approachable route, while the hike on the Eileen Getty Ridge Trail past Burbank and Cahuenga Peaks is shorter and tougher but feels more like a “real” hike. The issue is once you get to the top of Mount Lee, you’re looking at the back-side of the Sign, separated by a chain link fence and thousands of dollars of fast-response security equipment. Tourists and residents have come into increased conflict over access to front-facing views, as GPS and Google Maps have funneled an increasing number of visitors into a mountainous residential neighborhood where nearly 100-year-old road grades are definitely not built to accommodate that traffic. Lawsuits have closed formerly popular access gates to Griffith Park, and efforts to extend light mass transit to some of these potential trailheads has been met with opposition. This should be standard procedure on all trails, but it’s especially important here where neighborhood complaints may further threaten public access (there are unfortunate precedents near popular trails in Rancho Palos Verdes and Whittier, among other SoCal locations) — hikers need to be on their best behavior here. Leave your bluetooth speaker
Trail Stats
4.9 km
149 m
324 m
222 m
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