Epic Urban Hike: 10 Days, 190 Miles, and 300 'Secret Stairs' around Los Angeles
Dave Ptach, a Los Angeles resident who lives off a stairstreet, leads a weekly public stairway walk in Silver Lake. Each month, "Secret Stairs: A Walking Guide to the Historic Staircases of Los Angeles" author Charles Fleming takes Angelenos on hikes that are found in or related to his book (watch KCET's video of his walks here). Every year, Dan Koeppel does a massive two-day hike called The Big Parade that covers around 100 public staircases between downtown Los Angeles and the Hollywood Sign.
And then there's Bob Inman, author of "A Guide to the Public Stairways of Los Angeles," who also leads a dozen or so of these urban hikes each year. But Bob is up to something more extreme these days...
It began Friday: an urban hike of 300 public staircases between La Canada Flintridge (actually outside of L.A.) to San Pedro (L.A.'s portside neighborhood). He'll be joined by two others, Andrew Lichtman and Ying Chen, and they will walk up, walk down, eat at restaurants, sleep on the floors at friends (or camp in the backyard), and reluctantly take five buses in between large areas void of the staircases.
To explain more, Lichtman and Chen caught up with Steve Chiotakis of KCRW to explain what this is all about:
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