Hikers’ Dream of Complete Trail Is Closer to Reality

Some feet were tired. Others were sore. A few had blisters after days of pounding the hot, dusty trail in the Santa Monica Mountains. Yet the sight of the air-conditioned passenger vans, which showed up to whisk the hikers across an impassible stretch during their seven-day trek, did not come as a relief. Instead, the sentiment was closer to disappointment.

As the 31 hikers boarded the vans, they felt deprived of the cool ocean breezes that swept up long canyons, carrying the aroma of sage and purple lupine. They felt cheated out of the sensory treats that every bend in the trail can bring, whether it’s a glimpse of a coyote skulking in the brush or a whale spouting in the ocean below.

The hikers looked forward to the day when a motorized detour won’t be necessary, when it will be possible to walk the entire 60-mile Backbone Trail.

Indeed, the point of the hike, which many in the group have taken for three years in a row, was to nudge public officials to fill in the last remaining gaps of the Backbone Trail and create an uninterrupted footpath from Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County to Will Rogers State Park in the Pacific Palisades.

“It would have been nice to be able to hike the whole way,” said Gail Hanna, a U.S. Navy retiree and veteran of many long hikes along the coast of California. Without the need of motorized vehicles, she said, “it would be a dream of a walk.”

The reality is nearly at hand. Four miles of the 5.5-mile gap will be connected in coming weeks, as work crews put the finishing touches on a stretch of mountainous trail with commanding views of the Pacific Ocean and the Channel Islands. A dedication ceremony is set for Thursday.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) has secured federal funds to buy easements or property to close the final 1.5-mile gap. “This has been a 25-to 30-year process,” Sherman said. “We’re nearly there.”

National Park Service officials are now in “delicate negotiations” to buy the final five parcels, or purchase public rights of way, said Woody Smeck, acting superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

“There is actually a footpath through the area, but it’s not legal or sanctioned,” Smeck said. “After buying hundreds of parcels, it’s come down to the last five. I’m hopeful that, in the next 12 months, we can either close on these ... or find alternatives around them.”

Some of the most persistent voices prodding the government have come from the 31 men and women who turn out each year to walk as much of the Backbone Trail as can be walked.

The seven-day expedition was led by a Backbone Trail advocate and guidebook author, Milt McAuley. At 83, McAuley knows as much about these mountains as anyone. “This needs to be a substantial trail,” McAuley said. “We are here to prove it’s worthwhile.”

Walking resolutely with a staff of a dried yucca stalk, the weathered McAuley looked every bit the mountain patriarch, with bushy white mustache and wild eyebrows.

“It’s important,” he said, “to push on.” It’s especially important to McAuley, who is determined to walk the length of a completed Backbone Trail before his legs give out.

But as the group of mostly retirees threaded through the chaparral, past sun-baked sandstone outcroppings and into glens of oak and sycamore, their sense of political purpose gave way to delight.

They smelled the monkey flowers. They tasted the sour and sticky seeds of the lemonade berry bush. They rubbed sage between their hands to unleash a burst of fragrance. Half of them, at one point, dropped to their hands and knees to scrutinize a tiny, delicate flower through a jeweler’s eyepiece that was passed around. Two women broke into a German hiking song that they had learned growing up in Europe.

“You come up here and you are on top of the world,” said one of the women, Franziska Jeffreys, a 66-year-old retired cafeteria worker from Port Hueneme. Jeffreys extended her arms skyward in an exultant salute. “When I’m 85, I may go on a cruise somewhere. But until then, you are going to find me here, sleeping on the ground and chasing rattlesnakes.”

Each hiker paid $50 a day for drinks, hors d’oeuvres and three meals a day. Their tents and other heavy gear--along with the food--were trucked in to meet them nightly where roads reach the trail. The event was cosponsored by the Santa Monica Mountains Trails Council and Coastwalk, a nonprofit group pushing to complete the California Coastal Trail from Mexico to Oregon.

Unlike more garrulous hikers, Dan Alper, 60, of Santa Cruz kept to himself, avoiding the chatter, the jokes and the laughter. For him, the walk was a contemplative one, a time to reflect on and take in the beauty of nature. Early in the hike, he found himself growing depressed and even angry at the roads that intruded into the wilderness and at the houses that seemed out of place, scarring the hillsides with wide perimeters cleared around them for fire protection.

“How could government allow this in such a beautiful area?” Alper asked. “In Santa Cruz, the houses are in the cities and the mountains are left alone.”

But as the group moved from remote Ventura County down the coast toward Los Angeles, his thinking began to shift. On the last day, the trail came around a bend and opened up to the towers of Century City in the foreground, the high rises in downtown Los Angeles farther away, the sprawling metropolis of 14 million people extending to the horizon.

“What this is, is a big, urban park,” Alper said. “I guess we are fortunate that big chunks of land have been set aside for us.”