The steep and return route to Beacon’s Beach reopened Thursday in time for the weekend of July 4th after the necessary repairs from a recent landslide.
City officials closed the dirt track and paved parking lot at 85 feet above sea level after the May 2 collapse, which damaged the course and left cracks in the slope.
During the eight-week closure, the city and Scripps Institution of Oceanography were monitoring slope stability and collecting data to help decide if it would be safe to repair and reopen the runway.
“The city’s geotechnical engineer has determined that the bluff is stabilizing,” Encinitas officials said this week in a press release. The city will continue to work with Scripps, the State Parks Department and the California Coastal Commission to monitor the bluff for signs of another slide.
A contract began repair last week and ended Wednesday, with police final Thursday morning. The cost for the city, including staff time and temporary fencing, was about $ 50,000, excluding labor and equipment contributed by Scripps, Public Information Officer Julie Taber said Thursday afternoon.
Tricia Sundell descended the stairs to Beacon’s Beach in Encinitas, CA, on Thursday, June 30, 2022, the first day the track had been reopened.
(Bill Wechter / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
“The route has been kept in the same configuration and the road has not changed,” Taber said. “Additional steps were added … since a section of track had fallen nearly 2 feet.”
Four small retaining walls were also added, some damaged stairs were replaced and the track was leveled, he said.
Long-term plans call for moving parking off the edge of the bluff to prevent parked cars from passing in an earthquake or due to ongoing erosion, according to the city’s website. Non-native, invasive vegetation will be removed, and native species will be planted to help stabilize the slope.
The access point to the top of the cliff in the 900 block of Neptune Avenue, near the end of Leucadia Boulevard, began as a footpath more than 50 years ago. A better course was built after a major collapse in the early 1980s, Taber said.
The heavy foot traffic on the site, a popular neighborhood surf spot, adds to the wear and tear of the fragile slope.
A surfer, one of the first of the day, used the stairs to Beacon’s Beach in Encinitas, CA, on Thursday, June 30, 2022, the first day the track was reopened.
(Bill Wechter / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
In 2018, the city proposed building a wooden staircase supported by concrete pillars on the beach, a project that is expected to cost about $ 3.5 million. However, the city’s Planning Commission rejected the idea, saying the design was not suitable for the site.
A proposal to slow erosion by building a sea dam at the base of the rocks was rejected in 2009 by the state Department of Parks and Recreation, which said the structure would be inconsistent with environmental policies.
Like most of the beach in nearby Carlsbad, Beacon’s is state-owned and is officially known as Leucadia State Beach. The city maintains access to the beach under an agreement with the state.
The beach got its name from an aeronautical lighthouse mounted on a cliff overlooking the ocean in the late 1930s. At some point over the years, an unnecessary apostrophe was added.
Doug Fiske, a resident of Leucadia and former editor of Surfer Magazine, researched the problem and found maps and a 1963 “Surfing Guide of Southern California Beaches” that listed it as “Beacon Beach,” according to a story in the San Diego Reader.
