Drive north on Beverly Glen toward Mulholland on a clear afternoon and you'll see it below you: a flat plane of water tucked into the hillside, ringed by eucalyptus and chaparral, looking for all the world like somewhere you could park the car and walk down to. Enough people have made that assumption over the years that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has had to say, in writing, that it isn't true. Stone Canyon Reservoir is fenced, gated, and actively patrolled, and trespassing gets enforced rather than shrugged off.
That gap between what the canyon looks like from the road and what you can actually reach on foot turns out to be the more useful story than any single trail recommendation. It explains why the neighborhood's hiking options are smaller and more specific than the view suggests, and it sets up the bigger, noisier friction most Bel Air residents are dealing with this year, which has nothing to do with water at all.
What You're Actually Looking At
The reservoir sits south of Mulholland Drive and west of North Beverly Glen Boulevard, inside a facility that supplies drinking water to roughly 400,000 people across West Los Angeles, the Santa Monica Mountains, and Pacific Palisades. That's not a neighborhood amenity. It's part of the plumbing that keeps the Westside's taps running, and LADWP treats it accordingly.
There's a reason the agency is unusually blunt about keeping people out, beyond the standard case for water security. Stone Canyon was the origin point of the 1961 Bel Air Fire, one of the most destructive brush fires in the city's history, which burned 464 homes before crews got it contained. A canyon full of dry brush that also happens to be a critical water source is not a place anyone in city government wants to see filled with foot traffic, and that calculation hasn't changed in sixty years.
What has kept the confusion alive is that there really is a proposal on file, and has been for years, to eventually rebuild the Upper Stone Canyon Reservoir as underground storage and open hiking trails across part of the site once that's done. It remains unbuilt. Residents who've heard about the plan sometimes assume it's already in effect. It isn't, and there's no announced timeline for when it might be.
The One Legal Way to See It
If you want an actual look at the reservoir rather than a fenced glimpse from your car, the Stone Canyon Overlook is the answer, and it's a quarter mile from where most people try to cut through the brush instead. Managed by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, the overlook sits on the south side of Mulholland Drive and offers a short, fragrant, ADA-accessible path to a view of the reservoir, with the Palos Verdes Peninsula and Catalina Island visible on a clear day. It has a parking lot. It has an official name. It is, in every sense that matters, the version of this experience the city actually built for you.
Where Bel Air Actually Walks
Past the overlook, the neighborhood's real walking menu is a short list of named trailheads rather than the reservoir loop people keep hoping exists.
- Westridge-Canyonback Wilderness Park, which borders Mandeville Canyon and offers longer ridgeline routes with sweeping views west toward the ocean.
- Mandeville Canyon Fire Road, a steady, shaded climb popular with residents who want mileage without technical terrain.
- Caballero Canyon Trail, which connects into the Santa Monica Mountains system from the Encino side and works well as an out-and-back.
- Getty View Trailhead, which doubles as a way to approach the Getty Center on foot when the freeway ramp below it isn't cooperating, a detail that matters more this year than it has in a long time.
That last point is the hinge the rest of this piece turns on.
The Detour That Matters More Than the Reservoir
The Getty Center Drive off-ramp is the front door to the museum and, functionally, to the Sepulveda corridor that runs along Bel Air's western border. Since 2025, that door has been closing and reopening on a schedule tied to the I-405 Sepulveda Pass Pavement Rehabilitation Project, a $143.7 million Caltrans effort to replace and restripe roughly 92 lane miles of freeway between Van Nuys and Westwood.
This isn't a one-weekend inconvenience. Caltrans has scheduled about 25 extended weekend lane reductions over the life of the project, generally landing every two weeks, with the northbound off-ramp to Getty Center Drive a recurring casualty. During closures, Caltrans has pointed drivers toward two workarounds that residents have kept using ever since: staying on Sepulveda Boulevard and rejoining the freeway at Skirball Center Drive when heading north, or cutting over to Church Lane to reach the Sunset Boulevard on-ramp when heading south. None of this gets announced with much lead time beyond Caltrans' own bulletins, which is why the closures keep catching people off guard even a year into the project.
The paving work itself isn't expected to fully wrap until winter 2027, with plant establishment continuing into 2028, and speed limits along the corridor have been reduced to 55 mph since May 2026 while work continues. If you live anywhere between Bel Air Crest and the East Gate, this is the schedule that actually governs your Friday nights and Sunday mornings, not the reservoir.
Two Systems You Don't Control
Put the reservoir and the freeway side by side and the shape of the problem gets clearer. Both are infrastructure Bel Air depends on and neither is Bel Air's to run. The water utility decided decades ago that this canyon stays closed for reasons that have nothing to do with neighborhood preference, and the state transportation agency is mid-project on a freeway rehab that reroutes daily life every couple of weeks whether residents like the timing or not.
Knowing the difference between what looks accessible and what's actually built for you, whether that's a hiking trail or a freeway ramp, is a small kind of local fluency. It's the sort of thing you only pick up by living here long enough to test the assumption yourself, or by reading it from someone who has.
If you're the kind of person who wants dispatches like this from the neighborhood, along with the occasional note about what's changing on the market side, Morgan Goldberg keeps a running list. No pressure to buy or sell anything. Just the kind of detail you'd want to know if you already call Bel Air home.
