Waterlogged Park May Reopen Soon

The torrential rains of March that refilled reservoirs and watered the lawns of San Diego County also closed Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve for the first time in its history.

The park, one of the largest nature preserves in the area and certainly the most accessible, runs from Interstate 15, north of Mira Mesa, west to Los Penasquitos Lagoon, south of Del Mar. During March, it was closed for a weekend and, when the floodwaters came in earnest, was closed again until further notice on March 21. It is expected to reopen later this week.

Hikers and bikers, many on spring vacation, were turned away or tracked down and evicted from the preserve last week. No one will be admitted until city and county park rangers decide that conditions are safe for visitors and for the sensitive vegetation.

Geoffrey Smith, chairman of the Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve citizens advisory committee, said the closure of the city-county nature preserve was necessary on two counts.

“Our major concern was liability,” Smith said. “People in the park routinely try to cross the creek, not realizing the danger.”

The wet and slippery conditions also posed a threat to hikers, bikers and equestrians who stream to the 6.5-mile-long canyon on weekends and holidays, Smith said.

With the increase in North County population, the growing number of Penasquitos Canyon visitors also threatens the sensitive habitat, Smith said. Mountain bikes, which dig deep ruts in the trails, cause the most damage, he said, but hikers and horses, who tend to avoid the muddy spots and cut new paths around the mire, also create habitat damage problems in the damp soil. Motorized vehicles are not allowed in the canyon.

Rangers Bill Lawrence and Reneen Mowrey have spent the past two weeks shooing out trespassers who ignored the “Park Closed” signs or entered the park at some point along the canyon rims where no signs were posted.

Lawrence, a city of San Diego ranger, has authority to issue citations to violators, Smith said, and soon will have a four-wheel-drive vehicle to chase down the faster miscreants.

Runoff damage to the steep canyon included creation of a lake at the western end of the park, where Penasquitos Creek empties into Penasquitos Lagoon. Water backed up to a depth of about 6 feet east of I-5, leaving only the tips of posts of a protective barbed-wire boundary fence showing, according to Douglas Ruth, county district park manager.

He said runoff from roofs, driveways and streets of subdivisions built in the past 12 years on the north and south rims of the canyon have exacerbated damage.

P.J. Piburn, a volunteer caretaker who lives in the park and operates a concession for hayrides during more clement weather, said waters surged near the reserve’s upper parking lots and carried away telephone poles placed as barriers around the staging areas.

She said that, last week, “we had to turn away a lot of people, some of them who had come a long way to go through the canyon. There were a lot of angry and disappointed people.”

The park was reopened briefly last week to admit officials and the news media for a press conference called by San Diego City Councilman Bruce Henderson to announce that a grove of eucalyptus trees at the eastern end of the park would be cut down and replaced by native cottonwood and sycamore trees. It is part of a mitigation project to offset environmental damage that will be caused by construction of Route 56--an east-west freeway linking Interstates 5 and 15 through the North City area.

The reserve is expected to be opened later this week, unless more rainfall occurs, Ruth said. He said park rangers are preparing a policy on closures that will be reviewed by the citizens advisory committee and probably be submitted to a three-member task force composed of County Supervisor Susan Golding and City Council members Abbe Wolfsheimer and Henderson for final approval.

The park, which was created in 1977 in an agreement between the county and a developer that owned the canyon, has about 3,000 acres and is jointly administered by the city and county of San Diego.