Despite the pandemic, nonprofit Friends of Coast Walk Trail is soldiering on with fundraising to complete ongoing projects to improve the popular half-mile panoramic trail on the bluffs between the Cave Store at La Jolla Cove and La Jolla Shores beach.
“This is a ‘paper’ street that makes it more of a challenge (to improve),” said Brenda Fake who, along with other trail neighbors, formed Friends of Coast Walk Trail to maintain and improve the picturesque trail overlooking the ocean, which was designated historical in 1990. “As such, it falls between the cracks of City functions,” added Fake, Friends of Coast Walk Trail chair.
Fake explained that Coast Walk, as both a trail and technically a street, involves overlapping, and sometimes conflicting, City departments and jurisdictions governing streets and parks.
“The parks guys do as much as they can with picking up garbage and doing vegetation trimming,” noted Fake, “But it needs much more. Which is why we started Friends of Coast Walk Trail about 10 years ago.”
So Friends has been fundraising to help finance and complete tasks, like removing a huge stand of invasive Arundo, a tall-growing bamboo-like plant that had taken over a hillside trail section near the bridge by one trailhead with a small parking lot accessible from Torrey Pines Road. “It cost $7,000 to $10,000 to clean that out,” she said. “That slope is now barren.”
Another project by Friends of Coast Walk Trail involves addressing water leaking from underneath the trail eroding bluffs, while a third project entails the restoration of eroded stretches of the trail due to wear and tear. “We’ve been working together with stormwater and parks,” noted Fake.
At the same end of the trail where the Arundo was removed, a turnaround in a small parking lot was completed at that trailhead with a small cul-de-sac near Prospect Street. “Gary Pence (traffic engineer) from the City came out and worked with residents on a viable design,” said Fake noting, “You can’t have more parking down there because it’s a sensitive bluff. There are now seven parking spots, one disabled, and the turnaround to relieve congestion.”
Other trail-improvement projects include Overgrown vegetation removal, funded and started; removal of invasive Century plants and replanting of Lemonade berry, funded and started; and repair of worn Goldfish Point fencing, fundraising starting in fall 2020 with work scheduled to begin January 2021.
Of five trail-improvements projects, Fake noted, “Two of the five are done. We can do the work if we have the funding.”
Fake estimates $25,000 will be needed to finance trail improvements. “I have one person who committed $5,000, and I’m about halfway there,” she said, adding a major problem being dealt with is replacing non-native invasive plants with drought-tolerant native species, like the lemonade berry for Century plant swap.
About Friends of Coast Walk Trail’s plans, Fake said, “We’ll just keep going forward for the next three years.”
Besides being scenic, there’s another distinguishing characteristic of the Coast Walk Trail: It’s practically in neighbors’ backyards.
“Coast Walk is a trail, it’s a street, it’s people’s sidewalk, it’s a connector,” Fake said. She added Friends is working with Black Sage Environmental, a firm with 30 years of combined experience with natural resource management and environmental protection, on trail improvements.
Fake said the pandemic has caused the dog-friendly trail with seven strategically placed but well-worn benches along its way to become more crowded, as quarantining people get out for a little socially-distanced R&R. “It’s not wide enough to accommodate both pedestrians and bikes,” she said. “It’s really a trail to be walked, not hiked.”
For more information, or to volunteer or make a donation to Coast Walk Trail restoration, visit friendsofcoastwalk.org.