Author Tells San Diego to Take a Hike

“This is probably the most urban hike in the book,” said Jerry Schad, zipping up his jacket as he prepared to set out from South Carlsbad State Beach early one recent morning. “But even though there are houses and cars nearby, they’re hard to see from the beach. Most of the time you feel isolated between the ocean and the bluffs.”

He led the way across immense piles of round cobbles that seem to be a permanent feature of Carlsbad’s beaches these days--tough, noisy walking at first. But with customary foresight, Schad had timed his hike to coincide with low tide, and soon was walking south on soft, flat sand that would be submerged again in a few hours.

It wouldn’t occur to most people that there is a five-mile beach hike between South Carlsbad State Beach and Cardiff State Beach. But you’ll find it listed under Trip 1 in area B-1 of Schad’s new book, “Afoot and Afield in San Diego County.”

There is probably no one who has more experience hiking in the county than Jerry Schad. Few hikers could match his zeal for the outdoors, either. So it was logical that in 1984 the Berkeley-based Wilderness Press asked Schad to write a guide to hiking in the county.

“We knew Jerry had written hiking guides before,” including one covering Santa Cruz area and a previous guide to San Diego County that listed only 35 trails, said Thomas Winnett, president of Wilderness Press. “He’s a dedicated, competent outdoorsman as well as a writer. We never considered anyone else.”

Schad responded with detailed descriptions of 176 different hikes

for “Afoot and Afield in San Diego County,” which was published this month and is available in San Diego bookstores. Included in it are routes that range from ridiculously easy to amazingly difficult; some ramble past mountain waterfalls and others lead to twisting mud caves in the desert.

“Nowhere else in America,” he writes in the book, “is such a broad range of natural environments so close and conveniently located, and so available year ‘round, to such a large population.”

And the population is becoming aware of it. In the Cleveland National Forest, the number of people hiking more than doubled between 1982 and 1985, with hikers accounting for more than 121,000 of the forest’s total 2,276,800 recreational visitor days in 1985 (a visitor day is defined as one person using the forest for one day). Meanwhile, visitor use in Cuyamaca Rancho and Palomar state parks has climbed 33% over the last 10 years to 750,000 visitor days in 1985, and one out of every 10 visitors is a hiker, according to a state parks spokesman.

Those figures are likely to increase now that Schad’s book is out. As he strode briskly down the beach, Schad explained that he tried to write “Afoot and Afield” for as wide an audience as possible. “It’s absolutely the most complete guide to hiking in San Diego County that has ever been published.

“For each hike, the book explains how to get there, what precautions--if any--to take, and something about the plants and animals you’ll see along the trail.” A system of symbols also identifies the difficulty of the hikes and the type of terrain they pass through. And Schad has included 50 maps that offer limitless opportunities for planning and daydreaming.

Keeping in Shape

Schad, who teaches astronomy part time at Grossmont and Mesa colleges, began his research for the book in December, 1984. Over the next five months he hiked nearly 1,000 miles.

“With 176 different hikes, you’d think some would be pretty dull, but I’d do all of them again,” he said.

Keep in mind, though, that this is a guy who looks for an excuse to hike the way most of us look for an excuse to eat. Schad is 38, with a 5-10, 132-pound frame that is as lean and hard as a tree trunk.

He first got interested in outdoor exercise as a student at UC Berkeley. From riding his bicycle a few blocks to school, he quickly moved up to riding 100 and sometimes 200 miles a day. Once, he rode his bike from San Jose to San Diego in three days.

Then he discovered running. For a while Schad ran marathons (his best time was 2 hours, 53 minutes); after that he started running on wilderness trails. He has run across the Grand Canyon twice--that is, down one side, across the Colorado River, and up the other side.

“Actually, I got bored with running and I don’t race any more,” he said. “I still run 25 miles or so a week, but that’s less than I’ve done for years and years.

“Why do I do it? Because it keeps me prepared for anything I want to do. If I want to climb the highest peak in the county or run 40 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, I can do it without going through a training program.

“Running is just a faster way of hiking,” he added. “If you run 10 miles at a stretch, which I can do pretty easily, it’s easy to cover 30 miles in a day.”

Knows the Turf

On his trips into San Diego’s backcountry, Schad has learned a lot about the natural history of the area. For instance, the cobbles littering Carlsbad’s beaches were thrown out originally by volcanoes and carried here by a river some 50 million years ago, when San Diego and Baja California were still part of mainland Mexico, he noted.

And as he crossed an outcrop of rock near the Encinitas beach called Swami’s, Schad pointed to bullet-sized holes in the stone. “Those were caused by mollusks. They get in there and secrete substances that dissolve the rock,” he said.

Schad has also discovered bits of the county’s more recent history on his hikes. In “Afoot and Afield” he describes one trail that follows the old Kelly Ditch, a stone channel near Cuyamaca Peak that was built in the 19th Century by Chinese and Russian laborers. The channel caught runoff and diverted it into Cuyamaca Reservoir. Some of the old stonework can still be seen, covered with moss beneath the towering pines of Cuyamaca-Rancho State Park.

Among the most unusual sights Schad encountered on his research were the mud caves of the Carrizo Badlands, in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. The caves were created by flood waters that gouged out subterranean channels in the land’s undulating ridges. He noted that some of the caves are more than 1,000 feet long and have ceilings that range from a few feet in height up to 80 feet.

Other memorable sights included the waterfalls he came upon in several mountain and desert valleys. “Some of them are really eye-popping,” said Schad. “I was surprised that there was so much water.” The largest waterfall in the county is Cedar Creek Falls, on the upper reaches of the San Diego River. The waterfall is hard to get to, but water thundering over the 90-foot cliffs is an impressive sight in the spring, he said.

Timing Important

Timing a hike for a particular season or time of day is as important to Schad as knowing how far you plan to go, and he has included tips on the best times to take various hikes in his book. “Most people tend to think summer is the season to be outdoors. That may be true in other parts of the country, but in San Diego, fall, winter and spring are the best seasons for hiking,” he said.

“The time of day is important, too. Penasquitos Canyon is a good example. It’s hot in the middle of the day and there’s not much to see--the sun washes out the colors. But in the evening it’s cooler and you get nice shadows.”

Likewise, hiking along the beach from South Carlsbad to Cardiff is impossible at high tide, but a cinch at low tide, he pointed out. At least, it is for anyone as physically fit as Schad. When he arrived at Cardiff State Beach after the brisk, two-hour walk, he seemed ready to tackle some real exercise--say, a 10-mile jog in the Laguna Mountains.

“These local trails are great,” he said, looking around as the late-morning sun began to gleam through the coastal clouds. “They may not be as spectacular as the Grand Canyon or the Sierra, but it’s so easy to get to them.

“You jump in the car, and an hour later you’re out doing what you want to be doing.”