These 8 L.A. hiking trails are accessible to just about everyone

May 31, 2023

We’re blessed with a wealth of beautiful and ecologically diverse trails in Southern California, from those that hug the rugged coastline to others that twist through pine-canopied canyons and pastel desert landscapes.

But most of these trails aren’t accessible to nature lovers with limited mobility, including people who use wheelchairs or other equipment to help them walk, folks who are older or have physical disabilities, and children who aren’t yet able to traverse rocky or steep inclines.

This guide features eight hikes and nature walks within an hour’s drive of Los Angeles that can be enjoyed by just about everyone.

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We consulted with Ed Price, founder of the Trail Access Project, a nonprofit in Nevada that helps people with physical disabilities have safer and more meaningful outdoor experiences, to find out what makes a path accessible.

“What’s accessible for one person won’t be accessible for another,” Price stressed. But trails that can be enjoyed by the widest range of abilities do have a few things in common: they’re either paved or made from firm ground that wheelchairs can traverse safely; they’re at least three feet wide; and they have a low-grade, meaning they’re relatively flat. They should also have accessible parking spots nearby. Resting areas and handrails are a plus.

In 2013, the U.S. Access Board issued new accessibility standards for trails on federal lands. The standards require new trails to have certain features that you can read about here (they mirror the characteristics we listed above, for the most part). California State Parks also follow these guidelines.

And yet accessible trails remain few and far between, in part because these guidelines are so new, and it takes a lot of work and money to build a trail that might be more accessible. “With some of these agencies, that hasn’t been a priority,” Price said.

There were four other trails we checked out that we didn’t end up including because they wouldn’t be usable for many people in wheelchairs.

One of them — Inspiration Point loop in Will Rogers State Historic Park — was explicitly labeled an accessible trail. And while it technically may have met the federal accessibility standards, we found it too bumpy and steep to be on this list. We also visited Griffith Park’s Fern Dell Nature Trail, which we thought would be a given to include because of its reputation as a gentle, family-friendly stroll. And it is, in many ways. But the path has steps built into it, it was narrow and uneven in many spots, and there weren’t accessible parking spots close by. This process really showed us how challenging it can be to find trails that are built for people of all abilities.

Everyone should be able to enjoy the outdoors, and we hope this list will make doing so a little easier. Happy hiking!