Throughout my 35 years in San Diego, I’ve visited Balboa Park hundreds of times. I’ve written articles about it and led tour groups through it. But the recently inaugurated Balboa Park Trails system is opening doors and pointing the way to new pleasures, even for veteran park lovers like me.
Senior Park Ranger Casey Smith says roughly 24 loop trails ideal for walking and running have been identified throughout the 1172-acre preserve. All the trails run along existing byways, which range from well-trod concrete sidewalks to steep and rutted paths that penetrate the park’s little-explored canyons. But never before have they been mapped and measured and marked with easy-to-read signage. That’s what’s happening with the new trails project, which was conceived about two years ago when community activists David Contois and Alyssa Wolven separately approached Smith about the need for and value of such a system.
Contois and Wolven also helped obtain funding from the San Diego Foundation, and other community members helped plan the project. Smith says it cost about $8000 to complete the first phase, which emanates from the corner of Sixth Avenue and Upas Street (the northwest corner of the park).
There you find a large blue sign bearing a
map and detailed descriptions of the five trails starting from the Sixth and Upas “Gateway.” These range in length from 1.5 to 6.6 miles, and in challenge from Easy (level, easily accessible concrete walkways) to Difficult (half of it consisting of sloping to steep dirt trails.) Trail #5, the difficult 6.6.-mile one, has proven to be the most popular so far, according to park rangers. Among other things, it explores the little-known Marston Hills Canyon, rambles up Gold Gulch, and follows the bridle path that runs along the western side of Highway 163.
Extensive clearing of some of the park’s canyons has taken place during the past two years, and as this occurred the homeless and drug users who once claimed these areas have move out too. So the trails that run through the groves of redwoods and Torrey Pines and Norfolk pines and olives trees and other wonderful woodsy specimens in these areas feel more like wilderness than urban wilds.
Smith says the next phase of the project will be a gateway erected in the Morley Field dog park parking lot; he hopes that will be up by June of 2009. With luck, the other three gateways will follow at roughly 6-month intervals after that. In the meantime, a map of the first phase can be downloaded from http://www.balboapark.org/maps/TrailMapBalboaAndSixth.pdf.
