Holy hikers, Batman!

Adam WEST’S Batman, I imagine, had a fantastic gadget that could slog through rain goo, hop striated walls and vault, by my count, 243 steps with an animated KERBLAM! But we won’t hang out at Batman’s crib until the end of this hike, a nearly seven-mile Hollywood huff that requires some super foot power, though not Spider-Man’s sixth sense for trouble. Our cast members are a Peter Parker-esque photographer, a reporter who can transform into Super Slug, and Andrea Leigh. By day, she labors at the UCLA Film and Television Archive; by weekend, she summits peaks, herds Sierra Club greenhorns and shepherds us on this (more than) three-hour tour.

Scene 1: Beachwood Canyon

“This is where we start,” Leigh says, and grins at the first set of granite stairs that shoot up, up, up from Woodshire Drive among the fantasy cottages of Hollywoodland. I stare at mossy patches and ivy and Christmas lights trimming a wooden deck and hope we won’t tumble down, down, down. We scale another set of granite steps. A “Hahn for mayor” sign greets us at Durand Drive, and then pine trees, a plane rumbling overhead, cactus, a parked station wagon. Rain has shooed away smog, and downtown Los Angeles shimmers. “It’s so pretty, even though it doesn’t belong here,” Leigh says. She’s talking about the fountain grass.

Scene 2: Lake Hollywood

Before us lies the Dragon Lair, though no moat. The house, a jumble of spires and tiny windows (so the princess can’t signal for help) abuts a trail off Durand. A sign requests we please not smoke. We dodge doggy-doo on the path and behold Mulholland Dam and Hollywood Reservoir. The path peters out at Canyon Lake Drive, where pavement is strewn with rose petals, and three cars of tourists brake for a view. A nearby castle is buttressed with a burgundy-and-cream-striped wall and cactus carved with graffiti. Madonna once lived here, Leigh says, and I want to believe her; I like picturing the pop star’s reaction to the message “I Love Nelly.”

Scene 2: Lake Hollywood, Take 2

A red sedan slows on Mulholland Highway, and the passenger-side window rolls down. “Do you know where the lake is?”

“Down the street. Where are you guys from?” I ask.

“Downtown.” Sheepish laughter. “Not anywhere far like Lebanon.”

Scene 3: Hollywood sign

Mulholland Highway is stippled with posts: “No Access to Hollywood Sign.” No problem; the view from here is fine. We traipse past four- and five-story abodes, sniffing pine and car exhaust and getting close enough to see the struts that steady H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D. I rented my shoebox studio in Los Feliz, in part, to wake up to this sign and the Hollywood Hills. I grew up in Ohio and had never seen such monstrous camel humps. A year in Los Angeles, and they remind me of mochi balls.

Scene 4: Griffith Park

“This is the real L.A.,” Leigh ruminates. “The canyons, the sense of fantasy, the fairy-tale houses, the Hollywood sign. It’s how people perceive L.A., not what they see. They see Hollywood Boulevard and the mass cheap-trinket stores and traffic and smog. Hollywood is a state of mind.” Her ramble seems apt after we’ve slid around a white house’s gated driveway to a concrete path that opens to 4,107 acres of urban green. Howdy, Griffith Park. Horses whinny, and a rider jiggles under her cowboy hat. Pink light halos the L.A. Basin, sprawling to Century City and the Palos Verdes Peninsula, and a jogger with a three-legged dog asks if coyotes lurk nearby. We plod south. Pavement segues to dirt on the Mulholland and Brush Canyon trails. We hear gushing. Water? Huh? Rain has carved out a tiny Bridal Veil Falls, or as Leigh says, “A Barbie waterfall.”

Scene 5: Bat caves

Crayola-green hills darken to chiseled rock, and three arch openings plop-plop water that muddies cave floors. Cobwebs curl, and if you duck your head under them and into darkness, you whiff the stench of a post-flood basement. But, after three hours with a television theme song in my head, I can picture Adam West vrooming out of the cave, Robin in tow, to vanquish wrongdoers, or at least halt the Joker’s plot (insert evil cackle here). Tourists, who strolled a quarter-mile from a nearby gravel parking lot on Canyon Drive, crane their necks for photos of the Hollywood sign, and a light wind chills. The film site is a rocky marvel. “To the Bat Cave!” I whisper. BAM! POW!

Scene 6: Bronson Canyon

A wooden sign tells us we are exiting “Camp Hollywoodland.” There are wire fences and noisy cars. We huff on Canyon Drive sidewalks that border Spanish-tiled houses with jasmine-laced fences, and amble to higher elevations and mansion-priced real estate. Leigh scavenges for the photographer’s water in his bulky bag. Mild-mannered reporter hobbles on streets concreted in 1928 and 1929. You notice what’s etched into a road if you stare long enough. You only drink in the true character of your neighborhood when you are intimate with it. Intimacy is not found in a driver’s seat.

Scene 7: Beachwood Canyon

Gray stone pillars on Beachwood Drive usher us back to “Hollywoodland, est. 1923.” The sun caves into the skyline. Camera fades. That’s a wrap.

How to get there: From Franklin Avenue in Hollywood, go north on Beachwood Drive to Woodshire Drive. The first set of stairs start from here.