No Longer Off Limits : Disabled Can Hit the Beach on Path, Mats

Seated in her wheelchair near the water’s edge at Leo Carrillo State Beach in Malibu, Charlene Owens was jubilant.

“I’m in awe,” the Pasadena resident said as she took a deep breath of sea air and gazed at the incoming waves.

The beach is one of her favorite haunts, she said, but it has been off limits to her since her leg was amputated a year ago because of a circulatory illness. With a wheelchair, it was impossible to navigate on the sand.

But this week, Owens joined a crowd of public officials, volunteers and handicapped people in celebrating the opening of what officials believe to be the first facilities anywhere to allow a wheelchair to travel on the sand.

Under a $29,000 grant from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to the Easter Seal Society of Southern California, a boardwalk and system of canvas mats have been installed at the Malibu beach to enable wheelchairs to go from the parking lot almost to the water. The Malibu facilities are part of a program to make state parks and beaches in the Santa Monica Mountains more accessible to the handicapped.

“This is a big treat,” Owens said as she proceeded down a specially designed wooden path, called a sand ladder, that is bolted into the beach to allow wheelchair travel over the sand.

Access from the boardwalk to the rest of the beach is made possible by the movable mats, which can be set down to create a path wherever the handicapped person wants to go. The mats have plastic rings underneath that hold them in place.

The Leo Carrillo facilities, which were unveiled to the public on Wednesday, is the first project completed under the conservancy’s grant, officials said.

Similar facilities for the handicapped were installed soon after at Sycamore Cove in Point Mugu State Park, and two fully equipped campsites for the handicapped are available at nearby Sycamore Canyon.

The beach-access sites include special restrooms, telephones and picnic areas for the disabled.

Designers Were Baffled

Providing wheelchair travel on the beach has baffled designers for years because the wheels dig into the sand, leaving the wheelchair immobile.

The mats, developed by the Rittering Co. of Boulder, Colo., have been donated by the firm for the handicapped-access program, officials said.

The ringed mats are practical because they are movable and inexpensive, said Louis Levy, who coordinated the project. The equipment at Leo Carrillo cost about $1,500, he said.

Experiments on the design of the sand-access equipment are continuing, and the Malibu facilities will serve as a model for other access projects in the Santa Monica Mountains, Levy said.

The conservancy grant also will provide the Easter Seal Society with 5,000 copies of the book “Day Walks in the Santa Monica Mountains,” which features a list of handicapped facilities, for distribution to the public. The $3.95 volume was edited by Levy and published by the Sierra Club’s Santa Monica Mountains Task Force.

On hand for the dedication ceremonies at Leo Carrillo were several handicapped youngsters from the nearby Joan Mier Crippled Children’s Society Camp who had discovered the facilities on their own several days before the official opening.

“I like the sand and the water,” one 11-year-old camper said as he and others cheered at the ceremonies and took turns testing the paths.

Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the conservancy, said that the new handicapped facilities will mean that “a whole new group of people can now go to the beach.”