Galleries

OBF Spring Equinox 2026

California Aqueduct Trail

For a period of two weeks at the end of 2024 I became obsessed with the California Aqueduct Trail. That December I joined some friends on a bike tour over Patterson Pass, out to the Central Valley, and back to the Bay via Del Puerto Canyon. Those east-west roads on either end of the tour were spectacular, but what really seized my attention was the absolutely wild bike path running north to south along I-5 next to the California Aqueduct. It’s quite clearly the longest continuous bike path in California, taking you almost all the way to Bakersfield from the Bay, and nobody knows about this thing. I’m no stranger to I-5. I drove back and forth to LA for grad school more times than I’d like to remember, and yet I did not know this path existed. There’s shockingly little info about it online. From what I can tell, it was built as part of the California Aqueduct Project, and it was briefly closed in 2001 due to terrorism concerns. It’s since been reopened, but I really do not know if you’re actually allowed to bike along it. Nobody will stop you, since there’s not a lot out there, but it’s a fascinating piece of twilight zone bike infrastructure. It’s long, flat, hot, and doesn’t take you many places, but I love it. The stark contrast of impractical human infrastructure jutting out from the most unreasonable places is just peak California. As an aside, I highly recommend reading A Dreamt Land by Mark Arax if you’re interested in this kind of thing. Central Valley water overuse is a mind-bogglingly salient issue and nobody’s really talking about it except for the unhinged signs along the 5.