Steve’s Trail a Flight of Fancy : As City Turns Its Head, Steps Snake Way to Black’s Beach

Steve Simms stands on a dusty bluff overlooking Black’s Beach, his gaze panning down 340 feet of twisting, tortuous trail that over the years has thrown as big a challenge at surfers as the gnarly waves below.

But, as his eyes squint through a weekday morning haze, Simms doesn’t see a dangerous path along which dozens of daring beach-goers have been seriously injured, attempting to scale its steep slopes.

Instead, he sees a beloved project taking shape right there above the scenic La Jolla shores. He sees the hundreds of bulky bricks, 2-by-4s, iron pipes and heavy sacks of concrete he has hauled down the winding trail, like a packhorse.

He sees the sections of his sturdy wooden steps, handrails and metal drainage pipes that have made the path a much safer way to reach the famous nudist beach--a popular gathering spot for surfers and natural sun-bathers throughout Southern California.

Steve Simms smiles. What he sees is a much-improved access many locals now affectionately call “Steve’s Trail.”

“See that section right down there?” he says, pointing to a wood-and-concrete set of steps that even includes an overlook to the beach. “That’s the one I’m most proud of.

“Because that used to be a pretty dangerous stretch of undeveloped trail before I built those steps. And they’re not at all bad-looking--if I do say so myself.”

For five years, the 39-year-old San Diego man has donated his time, money and sweat to improving the trail used by tens of thousands each year.

When he isn’t spending weeknights and entire weekends hammering nails, mixing concrete, smoothing blacktop and grading wood, Simms scours local building sites for donations of wood and materials.

He peers inside industrial dumpsters in search of usable old bricks, solid pieces of scrap metal or pipes--anything to keep construction on schedule.

At night, though he says he has a home, the self-professed loner often prefers to sleep outdoors in one of the rutted gullies near his creation, sharing campfires and six-packs of beer with the area’s homeless population.

Meanwhile, his trail has become a controversial undertaking, admired by some beach-goers, criticized by others. All under the watchful eye of city officials, who will neither condemn Simms’ work nor help him.

His continued appeals to the city for help have fallen on deaf ears.

“I just like to build things, and this trail has needed this kind of upgrading for a long time,” Simms said, angling down the cliff side with a shovel slung over his shoulder. “Five years ago, when I started construction, I called the city to tell them what I was doing, to kind of get their blessing and their help.

“But they were all too busy to call me back. So I decided not to wait for the city, to go ahead and get it done. Other than sending some engineers over to ask a few questions, they’ve left me alone. I’m doing this work all on my own. And that’s just not right.”

Terri Williams, a deputy director of the city Park and Recreation Department, said that, although the unstable trail was officially closed a decade ago, Simms’ work has been so solid that city officials have decided to look the other way.

“The bottom line is that Simms’ trail doesn’t meet building codes--the city doesn’t consider it a safe trail, and it’s been marked with warning signs,” she said. “Nonetheless, because of his efforts, it’s probably the safest way down to that beach.

“He’s not going to be congratulated or taken before the City Council for any awards, but his trail is certainly an improvement over any other access for people, who go to that beach at their own risk.”

Lt. Brent Bass of the city’s lifeguard service acknowledged that in the last decade more than 2 dozen injuries--and a few deaths--have resulted from people slipping along trails while scaling the unstable cliffs above Black’s Beach.

The steep trail jackknifes back and forth across the wall of the bluff. At times, pedestrians laden with beach gear must leap up and down rocky sections where footing is sandy and slippery.

Other climbers have been rescued after reaching a precarious point of no return along paths like the Goat Trail, another popular surfers’ path that punctuates the tenuous rock and sandstone bluffs.

Bass has a love-hate relationship with Simms’ project.

“It’s a serious issue,” he said. “Steve Simms is breaking the law by defacing that bluff. And we’d be setting ourselves up if we endorse his work, and then somebody gets hurt on that trail.

“But, even if we put a stop to Simms’ project, people would still use the trail. So we’d be worse off without him. But nobody’s near calling that thing a safe trail.”

At Black’s Beach, the sentiment over Steve’s Trail is as equally divided.

“Steve’s a real nice guy, but he’s not connected with us or the city,” said Joe Bill, manager of the adjacent Torrey Flight Park, a popular hang gliders’ launching area.

“There’s just too much liability involved with that trail. Is Steve going to take responsibility if somebody falls and breaks his neck? A lot of us around here would like to see him stop his work and go on his merry way. And I’m sure the city would, too.”

Black’s Beach regular Al Spencer says that, thanks to Steve’s Trail, the demographics of Black’s Beach are slowly changing--for good and bad.

For years, the beach was so inaccessible that nude sunbathers and a large gay population who use the area could lounge in privacy. And the city did not see the need to enforce a no-nudity law on a beach that few people cared to try to reach, locals say.

Now, that all may change as families and tourists begin gawking as they take the Black’s Beach tour, Spencer and others fear.

“There was a time when you had to tightrope your way down a death-defying trail just to get to that beach--so it was often almost like a beach full of outlaws,” he said. “Now you can almost get a wheelchair down that path. As a result, the beach crowd has become older and tamer.

“Still, I marvel every time I use that trail. It’s really a solid piece of engineering, a labor of love. I think most people appreciate what he’s done.”

Surfers echo the concern that the once-isolated Black’s is becoming too accessible. Now, they claim, their beach is crowded with beginning surfers--geeks, goons and kooks, they call them--and other undesirables.

“I mean, why does he do it?” one surfer asked while huffing up the trail after a morning session on the waves below. “Why doesn’t he just leave the trail alone? Doesn’t he have anything better to do?”

Joe Moberg, a homeless man who in the past has helped Simms with his work, had a possible answer: “Sometimes people just do things, they take up a cause. Well, this is Steve’s cause. Day and night.

“Most of us just leave him alone, let him do his thing. He’s nuts. But it’s a good kind of nuts.”

Steve’s Trail was begun in the fall of 1985 when Simms bought two truckloads of reduced-price blacktop at a local clearance sale and dumped them at the top of the bluff.

Then he started working his way down, toward the beach.

Since then, he has spent less than $200 on materials--mostly for hard-to-find, pressure-treated wood. If he can’t locate the necessary wood, pipes or bricks on his scavenging rounds, he’ll put that particular part of the project aside until he does.

Over the years, Simms has received occasional help from migrant workers and other homeless types living near the beach--many of whom, like the seasons, eventually moved on. But Simms and his project have stuck around.

He works two part-time jobs--as a woodworker and a vendor at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium--and even referees high school sports. But, come quitting time, the trail beckons him.

The job progresses in fits and starts--”a weeknight here, a weekend there,” and Simms recently reached the halfway point on the trail.

He uses an old scavenged wheelbarrow to haul his bulky building materials to his work site, often sweating profusely in the midday sun as surfers walk past without acknowledging him.

But that doesn’t bother Simms. He has work to do.

When he reached one narrow section of trail that had forced pedestrians to walk sideways with their backs against the sheer face of a wall, Simms spent 18 months stubbornly chipping away with a pickax until the path was more than 8 feet wide.

Now he calls the section The Big Cut.

An ardent baseball fan who stays glued to a portable radio while he works, Simms has the quirky habit of associating the date he finished each section of the trail with what the Padres were up to at the time.

“These steps here were finished in spring ’86 when the Padres played a double-header in Chicago,” he recalled. “It was the first time they played Chicago that year.”

Simms was born in Seattle but grew up around the beaches of San Diego. The son of a Civil Service aircraft mechanic, he worked construction in Houston for six years but returned in the early 1980s when the economy there collapsed.

Now he traverses his own personal construction site with the air of a sun-tanned building supervisor, talking of the tasks ahead in terms of “high priorities” and “low priorities.”

There’s maintenance work such as redigging several support posts, painting over surfers’ graffiti and clearing away brush--all low priorities.

And then there’s the project to build a small bench at the halfway point for elderly climbers to rest and enjoy the view. That’s definitely a high-priority job, he says.

“I basically work with the know-how I have,” Simms said. “And what I can pick up along the way.”

And, although he says he has a permanent home, Simms often prefers to spend the night curled up on a couch he has hidden in the bluffs near the trail. “It’s quiet here at night,” he said.

“You don’t have to listen to any neighbors or pay the high-priced rents of La Jolla. And there’s no traffic here, no noise. Just the sound of the surf. That’s the sound that puts me to sleep at night.”

While he works, Simms also becomes the policeman of his trail. He yells at surfers who make their own shortcuts, often causing rocky avalanches that damage the trail farther down. And he scolds homeless people who litter the adjacent bushes.

Sometimes, he says, surfers and others will offer to carry a piece of wood to a lower level. Some even offer money, like the guy who drove up in a white Cadillac and handed Simms a $50 bill. Most just leave him alone.

These days, beach users are cajoling Simms to begin work on the bottom part of the trail, where the going is steep and twisted.

He wipes his sweaty brow and looks toward the sky. “But the days are getting shorter now,” he says. “Winter’s coming. I’ve got less daylight to work with.”

Without the city’s help, Simms predicts there’s a good 10 years of hard work to be done before he finishes his trail.

“I just can’t understand why they’re not down here to help me finish the job off,” he said. “But the heck with it, I’m going on without them. This trail is a safer place to be now, no thanks to the city of San Diego.”

Each day when he hauls away his wheelbarrow and puts away his tools, Simms takes a moment to look back at his craftsmanship. No matter what they say, he’s proud of Steve’s Trail.

He’s just glad his late father isn’t around to see how the city is treating his efforts. “He’d say I was wasting my time,” he said, “that if I wasn’t getting paid I was doing the city’s work for it.

“And he’d probably be right.”