KEY UPDATE: All linked maps and routes now have stairways properly marked (the old system, still described below, didn’t work.) Every stairway on my list is included as an overlay on the maps (so you’ll see many more stairways than the route includes.) Obviously, the ones along the route are the ones you should search for/take. YOU WILL NEED TO ZOOM IN TO THE ROUTE when you arrive at the map page, or all you’ll see is a mass of stairway markers.

UPDATED OCT 25, 2010 to fix broken Franklin Hills links.

UPDATED OCT 12, 2010 with four loop walks in Echo Park. There are now a total of 27 maps/route cards posted.

UPDATED OCT 8, 2010 with additional links to stairway advocacy sites.

FIRST: Everything below is FREE. I don’t charge for my walks, my routes, my spreadsheets, my maps – nothing. Why? Because not much in the world is free, and because I don’t own the stairways I love – and that I hope you’ll come to love. That said, I do own this content. You can reproduce it and distribute it, but you can’t sell it for the above reasons. I probably won’t find out if you do, but if I do find out, I will unleash the wrath of the over 1,000 people who have accompanied me on stairway walks in Los Angeles over the past decade upon your sorry soul. You don’t want that!!!!

For existing Big Parade and stairway types: I’ve finally begun my long-promised comprehensive stairway list/route publication project. Here it is. Please note that this document is a work in progress and it very likely contains mistakes (please let me know about them by contacting me here.) It is poorly constructed and written, as well as incomplete. It attempts to explain both my decade-long stairway obsession, and my philosophy of route design. Obviously, a lot of people couldn’t care less about all this, and I don’t blame them. If that’s you, simply cut to the routes, which are linked throughout the text (but please, at least, read the “rules” section, which contains some key info about etiquette when walking these very-residential routes.) Finally, there’s a super-easy walk at the very bottom of the page. Interested in coming on free guided stairway walks? You’ll find listings for those on my Facebook page, here or by following the Big Parade on Twitter. (and yes, I understand you may have no clue as to what I’m talking about. Try to read on, or shortcut by reading an LA Times story about me, visiting the Big Parade website, reading Alissa Walker’s account of the Big Parade event, or two of my stories that appeared in Backpacker magazine about Los Angeles stairways (2004 and 2010.)

THE STORY OF THE STAIRS

Over the past eight years – and with many friends, helpers, collaborators, and enthusiasts-in-parallel – I’ve developed about forty different stairway walks, ranging from two to 25 miles (for single day walks) and the two Big Parade routes, which ran 42 miles over two days in 2009, and 36 miles over the same time span in 2010. Though most of my routes have been available in some form or another, I’ve promised – and broken my promise – to publish them in one, easy-to-access place, mostly because the task seemed too overwhelming.

This page begins, I hope, to fulfill at least half that promise: the “one place” part. The maps come in an assortment of styles and forms, mostly reflecting my thinking and the available technology at the time I developed the routes. The earliest ones consist of turn-by-turn spreadsheets, and that continues with the Big Parade routes. More recent maps are genuine maps; you’ll find links to Google Maps pages, which you can then print out or annotate yourself. (Printing hint: the best way to get them on paper is to do it as a screen grab.)

I’ve included some basic commentary on the walks, but a small note on the fundamental design principles. The key to most of my stairway walks is to never go up and down the same stairway twice, and to never double back along the same stretch of street, if possible. You’ll see that even on the longest single-day walk – the “Stair Trek” – that goal is accomplished. I also try to make my walks pleasing, aesthetically, and by pleasing, I mean pleasing to me. That means that the walks feel geometrically complete, that they have a certain shapeliness to them, and that they observe a general mathematical order (for example, I try to keep a ratio of 2 stairs climbed for every one descended.) There are certain stairways – such as the trio of stairs that ascend Swan Place in Silverlake, just west of Silverlake Boulevard; or the famous Baxter Street stairs in Echo Park – that I believe must be climbed, and not descended. They’re that monumental, and nobody has ever been given an award for climbing down a famous peak.

There’s a lot more to say in terms of how I design these routes, and there’s a lot more to say about the routes themselves, and not wanting to – or sometimes not having the time to – say all that and explain what I’m getting at in designing these routes has kept me from publishing them. My innate perfectionism has also held me back. These maps are filled with mistakes, I guarantee it. (I completely encourage your corrections, though I ignore bitter complaints.) What I want most is that you go out and walk these routes.

If you do, please observe a few rules:

• In certain sections, you’re practically in peoples’ back yards. So be respectful. Turning these gentle public stairways into “boot camp” sites will unholy vengeance upon you, or at least make you look like a goofball who doesn’t know how to relax and enjoy an afternoon meeting your neighbors.
• In the same vein, you’re on your own after-hours. Some of these stairways are in areas that folks might find intimidating. The possibly inaccuracy of the maps will add to that particular brand of fun.
• Take Metro to the start points. Seriously. The routes are designed to be mass-transit friendly, and you’ll be surprised at how much fun LA Metro can be, especially if you’re riding it on a slow weekend. Most of my routes cross Sunset Boulevard at some point; your key line will be the Number 2 and 4 buses (info.)
• Finally, and to repeat: these routes are free, but I spent years designing them. You can republish them, rework them, share them, but you should give me credit – and you can’t sell them. Period. They are copyrighted. If you’re part of a fitness or hiking club and you charge your members, I respectfully suggest that you make this one a freebie – or write a check to the Echo Park Historical Society, Los Angeles Conservancy, or another group that takes care of the neighborhoods you’ll be visiting.

How to read the maps:

The Google Maps pages work with an overlay system. Start by selecting the “Master Stair List” map, which will bring up a plot (and yes, there are omissions, mistakes, and inaccuracies; help me correct them) of over 140 public stairways, stretching from Eagle Rock, through downtown, into Echo Park, Silverlake, and further east. Once you’ve got that list, you can then select the walk you want. If you’ve done it right, your Google maps page will show both maps TO-DO LIST: GRAPHIC TUTORIAL.

Here’s the Master Stair Chart. What you should know: The locations are not 100% spot on – meaning there’s a margin of error of about fifty feet (maybe more) in some of them. If you’re looking for exact street addresses, I highly recommend that you purchase Bob Inman’s “A Guide to the Public Stairways of Los Angeles,” which is now available in a new edition. I can’t say enough about Bob. I met him after the first Big Parade, and his influence on me – in both finding stairways and figuring out ways to map and identify them to the public – can’t be measured. He has become an essential collaborator on the Big Parade, leading the Friday “pre-walk” prologue, and has introduced me to the amazing stairways of Northeast Los Angeles (none of those routes are yet listed here; they will be.)

To-do-list for the Master Stair Chart: key the stairways listed on it to Inman’s pages. Also, move stairways to proper locations via GPS.

The earlier routes are available as downloadable, turn-by-turn spreadsheets, as well. These are easier to follow, though they don’t always match up entirely with the maps. Each route also reflects naming conventions that I created at the time I designed them. As my ideas and the areas I explored changed, so did the conventions – so you’ll find that the stairway names/numbers on the Master Stair Chart don’t always match up to the spreadsheet listings. To Do List: Cross-Reference and Make Consistent the Stairway Naming Conventions.

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to email me, but there’s a chance that I won’t get back to you promptly – a good chance. I’m sorry for that, but my stairway time is limited. Your best bet for information is to join me on one of the public stairway walks I lead, usually two or three times a month, which are announced on this blog.

Keep looking to this page for additional walks as I correct my existing routes and add new ones.

LOOP ROUTES:

My earliest routes began in Silverlake, at the Music Box Stairs, made famous by Laurel & Hardy in the Oscar Winning short of the same name. And the excursion most people who’ve done public walks with me have done the most is still based on that original route: Silverlake One is four miles and covers fifteen stairways. It usually takes about two hours to complete. Silverlake 1B adds a few more stairs and a little distance; that’s available only as a turn-by-turn spreadsheet. If you want to be thorough, you can do Silverlake Two, which “completes” the neighborhood – at least, the part of the neighborhood that’s west of the reservoir – by adding three more miles and eight more stairways.

• Silverlake One as a Google Map.
• Silverlake One as a turn-by-turn spreadsheet.
• Silverlake 1b as a turn-by-turn spreadsheet.
• Silverlake Two as a Google Map.
• Silverlake Two as a turn-by-turn spreadsheet.

Once I’d satisfied myself that I knew every stairway in Silverlake (I was wrong, but I thought I did) I began to explore Echo Park, where the hills are steeper and the stairway density is much greater. I developed an eleven-mile route that covered about 35 stairways in Echo Park (it was based on the shorter stairway walk given quarterly by the Echo Park Historic Society; stairway neophytes should definitely seek that journey out.) I still consider Echo Park Complete (with a Silverlake start) o be my best walk: it combines all of the aesthetic properties that I loved – the proper up/down ratios; climbing and descending the “correct” stairways,” and absolutely magical discovery. It was also my first walk that ventured into Elysian Park, going off-road. (The last walk on this list, as you’ll see, reflects my current interests – it is themed, but contains hardly a stairway, instead creating a virtual greenbelt that strings together parks, alleyways, hidden pedestrian paths, and other car-free rights-of-way to create a ten-mile loop.) Echo Park Complete is a difficult walk – you gain a lot of elevation – and on a hot day, it can be more than a brute. Try it with a friend. (Echo Park II and III are cauterized versions of EPI, with edges trimmed off to shorten the route. They’re not yet posted here (yes they are, now – see below) but you can refer to my Echo Park stairway master route – which isn’t a loop – and combine the two to roll your own walk. Recommended starting point: Chango Coffee House on Echo Park Avenue.

• Echo Park Complete (Silverlake Start) as a turn-by-turn spreadsheet.
• Echo Park Master Stairway guide (not a loop), spreadsheet.

NEW: I’ve added my four main loop walks in Echo Park. These walks all begin at Chango Coffee House (intersection Echo Park Avenue/Morton) and range from 6.5 miles to 10 miles.) Safety note: water (and bathrooms) are few and far between on these walks. Prepare accordingly. All of these walks are best done in the counterclockwise direction, that is, walking north – away from Sunset Bl. – to start. You can easily improvise your own shortcuts with the maps, or take the DASH bus, which runs up and down Echo Park Avenue (check www.metro.net for schedules. TO-DO LIST: Add transit links to this posting.)

• Echo Park One: 6.5 miles, 22 stairways, as a Google Map.
• Echo Park Two: 8 miles, 26 stairways,. as a Google Map.
• Echo Park Three, 8.6 miles, 27 stairways, as a Google Map (considerably harder than Echo Park Two, despite the similar paper specs.)
• Echo Park Four, 10 miles, 31 stairways, as a Google Map. A freakin’ brute.

With Echo Park and Silverlake “accomplished” individually, the next task was to weave the neighborhoods together. The first attempt at this resulted in a 15-mile, 46-stairway walk that I wrote about in the June, 2004 issue of Backpacker magazine (you can read the story here.) When I submitted the story, I really thought I had “all” the stairs in both neighborhoods on my list. That, of course, wasn’t the case, and years later, I know that you never have all the stairs. The Backpacker route, then, became obsolete – in terms of what I thought it was – the moment it appeared in public. That said, the short distance and concentrated number of stairs makes it a good single-day introduction to both neighborhoods.

• Read the Backpacker Article (large PDF download; a link to a web version is at the top of this page.)
• View the Backpacker Route in Google Maps.
• Download a turn-by-turn spreadsheet of the 15-mile Backpacker Route.

It wasn’t the publication of the story that turned my stairwalking public – it was that the story was read by Andrew Lichtman and Ying Chen, a mountaineering and hiking-obsessed couple who lived in downtown Los Angeles and who wanted me to show them the stairways as a means of embracing urban adventure. I can honestly say that without Andrew and Ying, my walking might have continued in an isolated and introverted way. With their encouragement and criticism and help, my walks became more and more public, and I worked harder and harder to improve them. Walking stairways and exploring improved my life, but the real improvement has been in learning how to share this with the public – something that I never imagined myself being able to do; the internal transformation required for that has been the greatest blessing of the stairways, and Andrew and Ying got me there. As well as to the two walks listed below. The first is what might be termed the evolved version of the Backpacker Route. By the time Andrew and Ying contacted me, I’d found more stairs and knew how imperfect my so-called “perfect” route was. The “Big Walk” – that encompassed all the stairs I thought I could fit into the basic framework of the Backpacker Route in a single day – became an annual event. It finally morphed, in 2009, into the “Stair Trek,” which was almost too big: at 25 miles and 68 stairways, it pushed the limits of what a single walker in a single day could accomplish – and got me thinking about multi-day walks. That’s how The Big Parade got started. That said, if you’re looking to do something really, really hard, the Stair Trek route is as physically demanding as just about any 25-miles of on-foot journeying anyone on the planet has ever undertaken. (Or would be, if there weren’t tons of wonderful places to stop and get donuts and ice cream along the way.) The routes attached below are for a classic “Big Walk,” at 20 miles, and then for The Stair Trek, at 25. (The Stair Trek remains an annual event – it isn’t advertised, as the Big Parade is, because it is pretty much designed for people who know they can finish it. Contact me if you want more info.)

• The Big Walk (18 miles, 55 stairways.) Turn-by-turn spreadsheet (only)
• The Stair Trek (24 miles / 68 stairways) Turn-by-Turn spreadsheet / Google Map

With the Stair Trek completed, I began looking for ways to extend the walks even further. By now, my list of stairways had vastly expanded – into the Hollywood Hills, to the west, and to Downtown LA. I had routes that included all of these (one day I’ll publish them) but when I attempted to string them together, the loops seemed dull: they existed only for the sake of walking. There was no aesthetic, no real spirit in them. The story of the Big Parade is too long to be told here, but you can read about via the links at the top of the page.

BIG PARADE ROUTES:

The 2009 and 2010 Big Parades followed fundamentally the same routes, with a few miles cut off in 2010 to get more people to the finish line, and account for the changed camping location.

The Big Parade routes are a little different than most of my walks because they aren’t loops – so you’ll need to figure out a way to get back to the start. But the Parade was also designed to allow people to come and go as they pleased, so you’ll see, in the printed directions and on the online maps, lots of opportunities to create loops of your own.

• Big Parade 2010, Day One: Printed Directions / Map (49 stairways/17.5 miles)
• Big Parade 2010, Day Two: Printed Directions / Map (55 stairways/17.5 miles)
• Big Parade 2009, Day One: Printed Directions / Map (57 stairways/19 miles)
• Big Parade 2009, Day Two: Printed Directions / Map (63 stairways/21 miles)

THE SUPER EASY WALK is in the Franklin Hills, covering 14 stairways in about 3 miles. (Easy, I guess, is a relative terms. This is the major Big Parade intro walk, and I lead excursions on these stairways frequently.)

• Franklin Hills non-loop route (as PDF file), for basic reference.
• Franklin Hills 1, (14 stairways/3.2 miles), Google Map.
• Franklin Hills 2, (12 stairways/2.5 miles) Google Map.

OTHER STAIRWAY RESOURCES.

• The original stairway gods of Los Angeles were Adah Bakalinsky and Larry Gordon, whose 1990 “Stairway Walks in Los Angeles” is now out of print.
• Charles Fleming wrote a comprehensive book in 2010 called “Secret Stairways of L.A.” It is comprehensive and filled with amazing historic info.
• The Echo Park Historical Society maintains a stairway list and offers tours.
• Alissa Walker is a Los Angeles pedestrian and gelato enthusiast, as well as a Big Parade route collaborator.
• LAist has published a bunch of guides to stairway walking in the Hollywood Hills. Here’s one, with links to others.
• Dave Ptach moderates the Los Angeles Stairstreets Advocacy group on Facebook.
• For more on public stairs throughout the U.S., visit www.publicstairs.com

To-Do List:

- Explain why some stairways have been illegally closed – and get you to help open them (for more information on this key issue, visit the Facebook group Los Angeles Stairstreet Advocates, moderated by Dave Ptach.)