RE: Carmel Mtn. Mesa, San Diego, Calif. At last night's Los Pen CAC, we received notice that the Rangers and City Staff intend to present a Trails Plan for the Carmel Mtn. Mesa at the May 19th CAC meeting, for approval by the CAC. It is the intention of the CMM/DMM Management Plan authors to incorporate whatever the CAC adopts into the Management Plan. Half of this is good: one aspect of the Public Comment we submitted on behalf of the MTC was the demand that the Management Plan use the Trails Committee rather than "make stuff up". But, half of this is bad: we need to "speak now or forever hold our piece". We don't have the draft Trails Plan yet, but it is apparently based on the discussions held by the LPCP Trails Committee last year (the one meeting I missed). It was apparent last night that some significant disagreement exists over what the Trails Committee "agreed" to, or didn't. The draft maps I've seen from the Rangers show only what appear to be fire roads (all as multiuse), some singletrack marked as "pedestrian only" and some "equestrian only (no peds, either)" singletrack leading to the pending location for the Clews Horse Ranch. Other than this, we're in a vacuum for substance. We, the multiuse community, still desperately need a GPS survey of the trails up there, with color coding or otherwise for width (road/double/single) and notations for "importance", etc... Sometime prior to May, the Los Pen Trails Committee will be called to revisit the CMM and discuss finalizing what they came up with last year. This, and the May CAC meeting, will be our ONLY chance to affect the trails plan. If we don't have trails info, and the ability to mobilize the community to communicate concerns, we risk missing out. Three MTC members are on the Trails Committee, and we will relay information to and from the Rangers. However, I do not have the time to GPS all the mesa trails and to create a good "TOPO" or "aerial photo map". If you ride or hike up there and care enough about the access issues to help out, we will run with it. But, if we cannot present a compelling argument for the preservation of particular trails, I am certain the strong preference of a few will result in an area with very little singletrack access. The "CMM" region we're dealing with includes Eucalyptus, that stepped hikeabike trail just to the west of Euc, and the entire top of the remaining mesa over to the current Clews Horse Ranch and the apartments. --Please feel free to post or forward this message to other mailing lists.-- See you on the trails, Erik Basil Multiuse Trails Coalition
