(upbeat music) - I'm Eric Hanson, and this week on "Epic Trail", we're doing things a little differently.

We're exploring the adventurous side of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

- For me, urban hiking is just exploring the natural areas of the city.

- [Eric] I'm feeling the heart pumping here.

- [Alexandra] Yes!

- [Eric] The San Francisco hills ain't no joke.

- These are- - They're redwoods?

- These are redwoods?

- Yeah, yeah.

- These guys right here.

- Yeah, yeah, right there.

That's a redwood.

- [Javier] It's really hard to find more better regional tacos in LA than within a one-mile radius of just this Boulevard.

- Oh, man.

That's legit.

Five stories high.

That's five stories tall?

- [Casey] This is the tallest point in Los Angeles county.

- [Eric] And this was no small feat.

I feel like this was a true challenge for today.

I'm Eric Hanson.

When I see a trail, I see more than a path from point A to point B. A good trail is the ultimate opportunity to explore, to discover new landscapes, and to challenge myself.

When I don't have a pack on my back, I'm thinking about my next big adventure, because my mission is simple.

My mission is to discover the world's most epic trails.

(mid-tempo music) Although I usually stick to the back country, exploring cities is captivating too.

So this time around, I thought I would see what kinds of outdoor adventure I could find in some of the biggest urban areas in the country.

First up, I'm in San Francisco, a place known for its great weather, steep rolling hills, eclectic cultures, and familiar landmarks.

While the City of the Bay is a popular tourist destination for many reasons, a growing draw to the area is the urban hiking and its direct tie to nature as the city is built right upon cliff edges, ravines, and more than 50 hills.

So one of my missions here in San Francisco was to explore the city and kinda do this A to B style adventure, from basically the top of San Francisco, all the way out into the water.

- Hey, Eric, nice to meet you.

- Hey!

- I'm Alexandra.

- Alex.

- Yeah.

- So I met up with Alex who is a professional urban hiker, and she's written all these guidebooks.

You can tell that she just has this big love for hiking.

And so the way that she loves to explore and share that experience of San Francisco is through the urban trails.

- We are doing the Creeks to Peaks Trail.

It is a trail that was launched in 2015, goes from Glen Canyon Park, about a 60 to 70-acre canyon, a natural canyon, and climbing up to Twin Peaks.

One of the Twin Peaks is the second highest natural point in the city.

- [Eric] So we're gonna get some miles in.

We're gonna get some elevation in.

- Yes.

- Get our cardio in for the day.

- Yes.

- Well, let's go!

- All right, let's do it.

Yeah, we got our mural here.

- So this lets us know what's coming up ahead.

- Yes!

- I like that.

- [Alexandra] That was the city.

Now we were in on the Glen Park Greenway, newly become an official green way.

For me, urban hiking is just exploring the natural areas of the city.

We're just so lucky in San Francisco to have 70 miles of hiking trails.

You can connect to parks using pathways or stairways or streets.

It's just a different way of walking around the city and taking in the nature.

- I wanna just like take one with me to Arizona.

- [Alexandra] Oh.

- I don't think it would grow.

One of the cool memories I have is just walking by this lady's front yard, and she's turned it into a butterfly garden with the butterflies that come and go all along the coastline and that use San Francisco as a really important grounds for their stops along their migration patterns.

And yeah, that's one of the things that I love so much, is seeing the people of San Francisco really take pride in their space.

- That's why San Francisco feels like a little small town to me.

You just have these, I've lived in New York City.

I love smelling roses too.

- Ooh.

- Good one?

- Those are good.

- Ooh, yeah.

- So we're meeting random butterfly experts.

- Yeah.

- We've got the gardeners.

- Yup.

- Love it.

- All right, so we're walking to Glen Canyon Park.

- Yeah.

- And Glen Canyon Park has had many lifetimes in its lifetime, and one of them was as the first dynamite factory in America.

This is a cool little art exhibit.

It has that little bulb and the sun is burning rings into this tree trunk.

- What?

- It kind of shows our weather patterns.

And then on other days where it's less sunny, there's less burning of the wood.

- So Glen Canyon is this little slice of a ravine that cuts through the heart of San Francisco.

And on both sides, you have full on city, but it's this deep gorge that actually when you're down in the bottom of it, it doesn't feel like the city is anywhere close to you.

And it feels like you're in like a little national park, like a mini beautiful green space within the city.

This is actually more than I was expecting.

- Oh, cool!

- This is super cool.

- It's super cool, yeah.

- Yeah.

- [Alexandra] I love this park.

- Actually, right now, I see very little evidence, barely any at all, that San Francisco is just on the opposite sides of these ravines here.

We still have more?

- We have more.

We're climbing up to Twin Peaks.

- Let's go!

- [Eric] I'm feeling the heart pumping here.

- [Alexandra] Yes.

- These San Francisco hills ain't no joke.

I can feel it.

- The altitude, no.

- Is there any place to get a little nap in real quick?

(Alexandra chuckles) With the cities, you have the culture, the music, the restaurants, the fine dining, but you also have amazing adventure opportunities.

And that was, I think, one of the neat things for me to see, is that you didn't have to make this big separation.

It wasn't just, oh, you have only the national parks over here, cities over here.

There's actually a really cool crossover right in the cities.

(gentle upbeat music) (lively upbeat music) - So I rolled out of bed today at the Lodge at the Presidio, and it is an amazing hotel right in the heart of the Presidio, which is an awesome place because I can just literally step outside of the hotel.

and access so many wonderful things.

Get to go right straight to the Ecology Trail where I met up with Michael.

- So we're in the Presidio of San Francisco.

It's at the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge, and it's at a really important and interesting spot in the ecology of California.

It's the place where the Northern California habitat meets the Southern California habitat, and where three quarters of California drains through the Golden Gate out to the ocean.

- So I started off hiking on the Ecology Trail, and there, there's just all sorts of different amazing flora and fauna, But you also have, right in the center of San Francisco, you have a real redwood forest.

These are- - They're redwoods.

- [Eric] These are redwoods?

- [Michael] Yeah, yeah.

- These guys right here?

- Yeah, yeah, right there.

That's a redwood.

- Oh, okay.

- Yeah.

- [Eric] It doesn't look quite as tall.

- Well, you know, they're actually not native to this site.

These redwoods were planted in the 1950s so they've got about a thousand years more to go.

- (chuckling) They're getting strong now.

- [Michael] (laughs) Yeah.

- [Eric] They're looking good.

- The Presidio has 25 miles of trail, hiking trails and biking trails, and it's a whole network.

So you can come here and you can have a one-mile hike or a half a mile hike, or you can have a 15-mile hike if you want.

Whatever you want, you can construct an incredible experience in the Presidio trail system.

- [Eric] (chuckles) That's so cute.

- [Michael] Yeah, that's really fun.

- [Eric] Wow!

I love that.

- [Michael] So here we are on the Batteries to Bluffs Trail.

- So the Batteries are old- - They're the gun placements.

- Military- - Yeah, so the Batteries to Bluffs Trail, there's this cutoff trail that goes to the Batteries.

These are old like 150-year-old platforms where the guns were perched, like cannons were perched over the bay to help protect the Golden Gate.

- [Michael] The whole idea was if somebody came, they could defend the harbor.

But the funny thing is no shot was ever fired.

- [Eric] Really?

- [Michael] Like, no one ever tried to take this place over.

Okay, here.

Are we ready?

- Here we go.

- [Michael] Let's do a selfie.

- [Eric] (chuckling) All right.

- [Michael] We can do a selfie right here.

Okay.

Wait, there's the bridge.

Okay, you ready.

Now, Now.

Okay, got it.

(Eric chuckling) - Awesome.

- Nailed it!

(Michael laughing) - [Eric] Boom!

- Chrissy field is this really fascinating place?

It's the old airstrip, but as air travel kind of moved out of the city, they rehabilitated this place, tore out the old airfield and then within like six months, you have all these bird species that have just come back.

There are so many things I love about the Presidio, but the thing I like most is what we're experiencing right now.

That you can be here and be immersed in real nature and then I can hop on the bus and be downtown.

(chuckling) There is nothing better.

(upbeat music) - So it's just me here and the two gentlemen here.

We're going off for a sunset cruise.

Feels pretty special to get my own little private catamaran here.

I think the conditions are actually gonna be a little bit spicy though.

The wind has definitely been kicking up this afternoon.

These guys seem confident that we can at least have a good time.

♪ Well Miss Lindy ♪ My Miss Lindy - Right now, we're just on a pretty typical sail around the bay.

We always try to hit the Golden Gate Bridge.

We'll cruise by Alcatraz, go hit up the city front for a little bit, while the sun goes down, lights come up.

It's a great time.

Yeah.

- The winds have already picked up mightily as we come out of the harbor here.

But we've got the sales unfurled, we've got the jib down.

We're making our way up headwind, right under the bridge.

It's gonna to be a beautiful day.

- Yeah, by the end of our sail, the water should flatten out.

It'll be a totally different tide, it'll start coming in.

Should smooth it out.

The wind might die down a little bit, it'll look like completely different place.

- So this is an amazing experience to actually see the Golden Gate Bridge like this.

I love how it's just disappearing into the cloud bank there.

♪ Well I love that little girl ♪ With the bright red hair - From the highest points of no A peak in San Francisco down through the Presidio, it's only fitting that we enter time here in San Francisco, on the waterfront with an amazing sunset cruise, cruising under the Golden Gate Bridge.

But my friends, the adventure is not over because up next we're going to Los Angeles.

♪ With the bright red hair (gentle upbeat music) (lively upbeat music) - Welcome to LA, my friends.

I have just arrived.

And you know, in order to get fully acquainted with this town, I feel like you need to go hit up some of the most iconic spots of LA.

When you're in LA, your biggest challenge is simply deciding what to do.

This sprawling city has just about everything.

Part of me just wanted to plop down on the beach and watch the endless summer unfold around me.

But, there's too much to explore because if there's one thing I've learned over my years of traveling, whether you're in a small town or the second biggest city in the United States, some of the best adventures are right around the corner.

(Eric speaking in a foreign language) (Vendor speaking in a foreign language) (Eric speaking in a foreign language) (Vendor speaking in a foreign language) Food is such an integral part of the travel experience.

And so I have been looking forward to this for a very long time.

I am meeting up with Javier.

He is a local taco expert and he knows all the best places to go.

So today we're doing a taco tour of LA.

Yo, how ya doing?

Javier?

- Yeah, Javier.

- Nice to meet you.

I'm Eric.

Javier is a celebrity, a true taco celebrity.

- My name is Javier Cabral.

I am the editor of L.A Taco and we are in Boyle Heights, which the neighborhood in Los Angeles and we are eating three different taco styles on Olympic Boulevard.

Boyle Heights is taco row because it's really hard to find more better regional tacos in LA than within a one mile radius of just this Boulevard.

Let's examine this taco de camaron for a little bit.

- Okay.

- So it's a shrimp taco, right?

- [Eric] Yep!

- Inside of the super secret mishmash of chopped shrimp, as you said, some kind of vegetable, some people think it's potato some, I dunno, I dunno what it is, not spicy at all.

So it's refreshing.

- So first off Mariscos Jalisco getting to talk with Raul, and he's got a secret ingredient that apparently people for decades have been trying to figure out.

Oh man.

(speaking in a foreign language) That's legit.

You're the one who can talk poetically about tacos but this is incredible.

So what do we have here?

- So now we're gonna have some- - Burritos (foreign language) We're gonna have some (foreign language) tikka style burritos.

- [Eric] Okay.

- (foreign language) chicken tingas, (Eric speaking in a foreign language) (Javier speaking in a foreign language) (Eric speaking in a foreign language) - So we're at the classic dining facilities for the taco tour, which I appreciate.

- You're really getting the full experience here.

- I totally am.

I love it.

- [Eric] Which one is this?

This is the tinga.

- The tinga, yeah.

Tinga is shredded chicken braised in a chipotle stew.

- Not bad at all.

That's the way to do it.

- [Unknown Man] Are you that taco guy?

- What's up man?

- L.A Taco, I follow you man.

(chuckling) - Thanks a lot, man.

Thanks a lot.

- Okay.

Tell me about La Unica.

- So La Unica.

This is one of the original Hypebeast's birria trucks in LA.

Birria is a stewed beef or goats.

- Yeah.

- And a bunch of dried chilies with a bunch of spices.

It's a flavor bomb.

A lot of people will compare it to like an Indian Vindaloo.

So this was kind of like the Mexican answer to that.

(Vendor speaking in a foreign language) (Eric speaking in a foreign language) (Vendor speaking in a foreign language) (Eric speaking in a foreign language) (Vendor speaking in a foreign language) (Eric speaking in a foreign language) - I didn't realize that LA really is a taco town.

In the veins of every Angeleno here, runs hot sauce and tacos.

- Thank you, man.

- Thank you, Javier.

- Thank you and- - That was so cool.

- You know that, now I'm probably gonna have to join you on one of your actual, real hikes, so I can, hey.

- All right.

We'll repay the favor.

We'll go crisscross.

- Awesome.

(gentle upbeat music) - Hollywood wouldn't be Hollywood without the Westerns, so I felt it was appropriate to meet up with Misty here at iconic Sunset Ranch, right in the middle of Hollywood, to go for a trail ride.

- Fully, you know, I do a lot of hiking and this is, this is very satisfying, letting our little bro, do the hard work for me.

- And this is meant to lower your blood pressure.

This is therapeutic.

It beats looking at a computer all day long.

- (chuckling) That's right.

Oh, this is fantastic in here.

I do love how natural it all feels.

Obviously, you got the road, but outside of that, it feels like a wild space.

- Right.

And the further we go, it's just, I mean, it could look like we're in the desert, we're in the forest.

We've got so many different types of trees out here.

- Yeah.

(hooves pattering) - Well I like this guy, I like little bro.

You're doing great.

- The moment we'll all been waiting for, the Hollywood sign.

It's about 45 feet tall.

So five stories high.

- Five stories high.

That's five stories tall?

- Yes.

That's the latest and greatest version.

- [Eric] Oh wow.

You timed it right.

I love the sun right behind the sign.

- It's perfect sunset tour.

- It's gorgeous looking.

- [Eric] Yeah.

Oh man.

I love it.

Hey, you eating that mustard?

Hold on.

- 'Cause if we stopped, I'm gonna try to eat a snack.

- (chuckling) You sneaky little bro!

(gentle upbeat music) (mid-tempo music) - Being here in the heart of Los Angeles, in Hollywood, I didn't really think that there was stellar hiking in this area, but I was thoroughly surprised.

It didn't take long before getting off the highway and you start going uphill that all of a sudden it was like, oh, we're we're in for a big hike today.

These mountains are huge.

- So we are at the trail head up to Mount Baldy or Mount San Antonio.

It's the highest point in the San Gabriel Mountains and the highest point in LA county, just over 10,000 feet.

We're about an hour, maybe an hour, 10 minutes east of downtown LA.

So depending on where you are in LA, this is a very doable day trip.

And it's a full day hike in a beautiful area, surrounded by wilderness, high peaks.

It is a very different environment than where you are if you're staying in the city of LA.

- Yeah, this is a thing that you probably would not expect, again, if you were hiking in LA.

We have a couple of big waterfalls here.

There's just so much to see out there.

We've got waterfalls.

We've got these old canyons where ski lifts are actually running up.

You can see right behind me as the Mount Baldy ski area.

Actually, it's a functional ski lift, during the winter months, people go skiing up here.

There's a couple different runs.

There's more skiing up at the top.

And there's a nice little lodge with some food and beer.

The summer, they usually do like sunset hikes and music up there too.

- It looks like a fun place to ski.

I kinda can't believe that there's even skiing at all in Southern California.

Feeling it here.

It looks like this tree is clinging on for dear life here - [Casey] Just hanging on.

- (chuckling) That mountain side is crumbling away out from underneath it.

That's wild.

It's a nice view off of here.

- Yeah, we're about to approach the Devil's Backbone.

- Yeah.

And right here, we're basically looking at the divide between the Mediterranean climate on the interior of these mountains and the desert climate on the exterior.

The mountains really more than anything, really shape the biodiversity of this area.

And you really see the boundary right here.

Desert kind of mid-desert, subalpine, snow, Mediterranean and then like the irrigated city below.

- One of the gnarliest spots in the trail is a place called Devil's Backbone.

It's a bit of a, could be a potentially dangerous spot, especially if there's any icy conditions or if it's high winds or anything like that.

But it's also fantastically beautiful.

Oh baby.

Yeah!

- [Casey] All right.

Here we are.

- [Eric] Casey.

That was awesome.

- This is the tallest point in Los Angles County.

Mount San Antonio, it's Mount Baldy.

- And this was no small feat.

I feel like this was a true challenge for today.

- You've earned whatever meal you're eating today.

- (chuckling) yeah.

- (indistinct) That's always what I tell people.

- Well, I really appreciate you guiding me up this mountain.

This was an amazing experience.

- Happy to have you.

- [Eric] Thank you so much.

- [Casey] Of course.

- So I woke up today, in the heart of Hollywood and you wouldn't be a little surprised.

I was certainly surprised to find that just an easy hour away is this amazing rugged landscape.

And I think that's what this adventure has been all about is exploring these urban areas.

You know, so many people are congregating in these amazing cities of California and oftentimes it can feel like there's just the concrete jungles to explore.

But even with just a little bit of effort to get out to these high points in these wild areas, there is plenty of adventure to be found.

So thanks to my guide Casey, today for showcasing this amazing place, because my mind is blown by what is right here in LA.

(mid-tempo music)