The Grand Plan: Uninterrupted Coastal Trail

Richard Nichols began walking the California coastline in June 1996, starting at the Oregon line. Ninety-six days and two pairs of boots later, he arrived at the Mexican border.

Now he is preparing to do it again--all 1,156 miles--next summer.

This 59-year-old environmentalist with a walrus mustache longs for another immersion in the gorgeous scenery that unfolds a step at a time along the California Coastal Trail.

But he loathes the artificial barriers that have sprouted along the coastline and that all too often force him off the beach and onto the shoulder of California1.

His life’s dream--and the ultimate goal of his job as director of the nonprofit group Coastwalk--is to see an uninterrupted Coastal Trail, one that is safe, well-marked by signs and doesn’t shunt pedestrians onto the highway.

“Maybe I’ll be 85,” he said, “but I hope to walk a completed trail before I go.”

He might make it.

After years of languishing, the grand plan for a continuous Coastal Trail that threads its way across beaches and bluff tops is beginning to gain momentum.

The White House designated the pathway a Millennium Legacy Trail, and the California Legislature declared it an official state trail. These are largely symbolic acts, but they can help open the spigot for government funds.

More important, the Legislature and Gov. Gray Davis passed a law ordering state and local agencies to figure out how to finish the trail. They even ponied up $10 million to speed the process.

So the state Coastal Conservancy, working with state parks officials and the California Coastal Commission, is supposed to report to the Legislature by next January with a master plan that shows the impediments to a continuous trail and estimates how much it will cost to remove them by 2008.

An estimated 65% of the coastline has marked trails or is easily accessible. The rest is another matter.

“We are not kidding ourselves that this will be easy or can be done overnight,” said Steve Horn, deputy executive officer of the Coastal Conservancy. “But we believe it’s an idea whose time has come.”

Horn likens it to knitting together the 2,160-mile Appalachian Trail, which took about 50 years.

But instead of snaking unobtrusively through 2,160 miles of Eastern forest and semi-wilderness, the California Coastal Trail would cross some of the most expensive real estate in America.

And therein lies the thorniest problem. Private property owners from Malibu to Mendocino don’t much care for the idea of thousands of strangers traipsing across their oceanfront property.

Wendy McCaw, owner of the Santa Barbara News-Press and a supporter of many environmental causes, is challenging a narrow public right of way that the trail follows across the beach below her 25-acre bluff-top estate. Although she has lost a series of courtroom battles so far, she vows to take her case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Other barriers abound. Vandenberg Air Force Base restricts access to its 35 miles of coastline during rocket launches. Point Mugu Naval Air Station in Ventura County is fenced off to keep the public away from hazardous beams of powerful radar. The Marine Corps doesn’t allow walkers to interrupt training exercises on the beach at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County.

The steep slopes along the Big Sur coastline provide little foothold for a trail other than the shoulder of California 1. To the south, the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, which uses ocean water as coolant, bars the public from a 10-mile stretch of rocky shoreline and pocket beaches.

Nor is it easy to get around the Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors. The Vincent Thomas Bridge is closed to pedestrians. When Coastwalkers reach this area, they have to hire a boat to ferry them across San Pedro Bay.

State and federal laws guarantee public access to the coast. More specifically, the public owns “tidelands,” or everything seaward of the mean high-tide line. That generally means people cannot be barred from walking on the wet sand.

But that line is ever-shifting with the erosive power of high tides and storm-driven waves. Furthermore, many of California’s beaches have narrowed over the years as streams and rivers have been dammed, robbing beaches of annual infusions of fresh sand.

Property owners have responded by building sea walls and depositing refrigerator-size rocks to protect seaside homes and restaurants. So in places like Malibu, multimillion-dollar homes and fancy fish eateries that once sat back from the beach now intrude into the surf zone, their protective structures blocking passage along the shore.

Such obstacles annoy Norbert Dall, a headstrong former Sierra Club lobbyist who recently trekked the 27-mile Malibu shoreline with biologist David Kelley to take an inventory of obstructions.

At Latigo Point, his hike was halted by monstrous boulders piled on the beach to protect a home built on stilts. He opened his notebook, remarking, “That’s got to come out.”

The Coastal Conservancy is expecting Dall’s recommendations, Horn said. But he thinks it is unlikely that state officials will be ordering the removal of any artificial structures.

For now, the conservancy is asking for the cooperation of every coastal county, city and gated community to suggest where to put the trail.

A cooperative spirit may not always prevail, said Linda Locklin, the Coastal Commission’s public access manager. As an example, she pointed out how the owners of Hollister Ranch, a gated community of ranchettes in Santa Barbara County, have fought vigorously over the years to keep their eight-mile stretch of coastline to themselves.

It has yet to be determined, Locklin said, whether state officials will force property owners to open their shoreline or whether they will be satisfied to allow the Coastal Trail to detour inland.

Coastwalk, a nonprofit group of determined hikers, many of them older and retired, continues to apply subtle but steady pressure to open up the entire coast.

“I’m not combative, but I see the trail as something we should do for future generations,” said Donald Nerlich, a Coastwalk board member and semiretired UCLA professor.

He wants to re-create the splendor he experienced as a Boy Scout, hiking an interrupted beach route from Santa Monica to Malibu.

“That’s the best way to experience a place,” said Nichols, Coastwalk’s director. “It’s an experience you cannot get through a windshield. You have to be out there.”