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Santa Monica Mountains to (Possibly) Allow Camping
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The closest mountains to my home are great for short hikes, but unfortunately, anyone interested in more than that is not allowed to camp for the night.
The Santa Monica Mountains, which run along Santa Monica, California and up through Malibu, have long banned overnight camping for a variety of reasons. Although the most important is fire danger, the most powerful reason for no camping is due to the celebrities and millionaires who live nearby and don't want a bunch of commoners increasing traffic and ruining their paradise.
The rich might be losing the battle, however. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy has just pushed through a tentative agreement which, if passed, would allow camping in the hills of Corral Canyon and Charmlee Wilderness Park--both of which lay at the far end of Malibu near Ventura County.
If everything goes accordingly, I'll soon be able to spend the night in Malibu in my own private residence--albeit, a two-person tent.
Filed under: Hiking, United States, Camping
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Robert Jan 6th 2007 3:56PM
Neil, do you have a link to information on that agreement? I can't seem to locate anything on the SMMC site.
John McNary Jan 6th 2007 4:02PM
Please get your facts straight.
There are numerous places in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, in and near the City of Malibu, where camping is legal and allowed.
Malibu Creek State Park, Circle X Ranch, Thornhill Broome Beach, La Jolla Canyon, Malibu Beach RV Resort, and Sycamore Canyon are SOME of the locations reachable by car for camping.
Backpackers are allowed to hike along the Backbone Trail.
The issue here is NOT camping. It is Joe Edmiston, the director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, expanding his little fiefdom. This is the guy who got Barbara Streisand to donate her 5-house compaund to his agency for an environmental think tank back in the 1980s. No think tank ever developed, sop Edmiston started renting it out for corporate events and weddings, with hundreds of people attending.
Only one problem: the compound is at the end of a private road. Residents along the narrow, rural lane suddenly found thousands of people driving up their driveway every weekend to what had become a restaurant.
They sued, and won. Edmiston was blocked.
Now, he's proposed putting a campground up there. This is at the end of a driveway, in firetrap of a box canyon. By the way, this canyon is already overburdened with urban runoff and septic issues ... the beach below (Paradise Cove) is already burdened with too much runoff.
The City of Malibu has offered several alternatives, places where parking, access, santiation and fire dangers are less.
Malibu hosts 17 million people to its beaches every year. It is not right to increase pollution on the beach to accomodate Edmiston's edifice complex.
If you really had spent any time hiking or camping in our mutually-shared back yard, you would know that Malibu is laced with camping sites and trailheads leading to unregulated backcountry.
Why dodn't you come out sometime and learn about it, before you spout off with inaccuracies?
nwood7@gmail.com Jan 6th 2007 4:43PM
John, thank you for the insight into this fascinating story. And thank you for pointing out the car camping possibilities in the area.
My hiking experience has been just that; hiking. I look forward to the day when I can backpack and spend the night in the Santa Monica Mountains in a place I can reach by foot, not by car. As far as I know, there is nowhere I can yet do this, including along the backbone trail. If I am wrong about this assumption, please let me know as I would like to tackle such an adventure next summer.
Thanks again for the above corrections and insights.
John McNary Jan 6th 2007 5:23PM
Sorry to sound defensive.
The City of Malibu used to be run by a whole class of people who wanted to erect tollbooths and moats on PCH, and live with leaky septics and private beaches.
No more. The people of Malibu are fierce protectors of the area, to be sure. We are also the heaviest users of the land and sea out here, and value public access.
And clean beaches. Some clown in Long Beach is writing newspaper columns saying Malibu wants his city to be the LNG terminal is SoCal (a bitter lie, no one in Malibu has said that), and that Malibu hypocritically does not want to clean up the old septic tanks out here.
Ask the Regional Water Board and Heal The Bay. In the last 10 years, Malibu has done a complete turnaround and elected city councils who have in turn enacted the strongest septic tank rules in the state. Cleaning up the stormwater at the Civic Center, which has poisoned Surfrider Beach for 50 years, is being paid for with $25 million worth of land acquisition and construction.
I live at a trailhead in Malibu, and like the city I support coastal and mountain access, including camping. It has to be safe (no fires!) and it cannot be on private driveweays, however.
And Joe Edmiston has commited a blood libel by busing in paid performers to say that Malibu wants to keep the poor out.