Ana Verde & Sierra Pelona motorway have been gated off

[Willi-D]

New owners of Lazy T ranch have installed gates and no trespassing signs at all of the fire road entrances to the Sierra Pelona ridge area from the Palmdale side.

My understanding is that the motorways (dirt roads) are county maintained public roads (to which the state also has an interest). I believe it is legal to put a gate at the entrances to keep the cattle from getting out but the gates must be unlocked and the public must be able to open and close them.

Some guys were up there working (putting more barbwire up) and yelled at me as I went under the gate and rode up the fire road. I just waved and said good morning and kept riding. On the way back down there were a couple more guys in a truck (plus the earlier workmen) out with their rifles doing some target practice. They started yelling "private property" at me several times and I just waved again and rode on by. I was a bit worried as they all had rifles with scopes but nothing happened.

I will see if I can google the legal status of public right of way on those roads if I have time later today. Sucks though having antagonistic property owners where for years the Ritters had always been friendly to mtb'rs.

 

[Mikie]

Thanks Willi-D...
The key is to find out if those fire roads are private with public access. A lot of people mistake private roads for non-accessible roads. Just because they are private roads(meaning they are not maintained by the County), does NOT mean they are not publicly accessible.

If that is the case then you are correct, they can put up all the gates they want, but they have to remain open or unlocked. Ofc ourse, there is no law against them being dicks about it...

 

[Willi-D]

Ok so the skinny is that ritter park which is comprised of 4,000 acres on the North side of the Sierra Pelona ridge was gifted to the state as a park. The state and county promptly turned it over to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy - which they pretty much had to do since they have no money to manage parks any more. The park is planned to be integrated with a bunch of already state, county, and conservancy owned land - and a bunch of planned parcel purchases - to become a very large corridor linking the San Gab's to the newly put together Castaic range conservancy. There are a number of planned parcel purchase in Santa Clarita, Agua Dulce and the southern edge of Acton.

The reason for the barbed wire and gates is to keep out all the A-holes who have been tearing the place up. Since the Ritters sold the Ritter Ranch area to developers, and paved access was created to the Ana Verde and Sierra Pelona motorways, anyone can drive up there; even many regular cars can get up the well maintained graded fire roads. I rode up there today and there are piles of brass and shotgun shells everywhere. In the flats there are truck loads of dumped garbage, mattresses, landscaping and construction waste. And since the Crown fire burned a lot of the vegetation, the motos are just tearing up everything with no regard to trails or roads. In short; it's a real mess up there!

I talked briefly with the moto patrol guys this morning and although they told me I shouldn't be up there, they said I could ride through and thought I was crazy for riding up that steep biatch of a dirt road. They probably will be keeping everyone out for "a while" to try to clean up and rehab the area a bit. No idea how long that will be. So even though the motorways are public right-of-ways, they are owned and controlled by the state and the state wants people out of there. It was a lot easier when the Ritters owned the land and just controlled things with a shotgun. Mr Ritter was very hiker and mtb friendly and even sponsored an annual mtb tour.

Oh well, thanks to the few A-holes we all suffer. I think the conservancy will welcome volunteers to do cleanup and such but the payoff as far as us being able to ride and build trails is sometime off in the future.