The Half-Mile Gap in Rancho Del Mar's Trail Network Is Finally Closing

Tomorrow morning, the leash rules on Del Mar's North Beach flip for the season. Walk out to the sand any day between now and next June and your dog can run free the whole time, not just the dawn-to-8-a.m. window that applies from June through Labor Day. It's a small administrative switch that happens every year the day after Labor Day, and most people who live near it know the date by feel more than by calendar.

What's less known, even to people who walk this stretch of Del Mar every week, is that the trail system feeding into that beach has had a half-mile hole in it for over a decade, and the city just put a construction timeline on fixing it.

Two Trails That Almost Meet

If you live in Rancho Del Mar and you walk for exercise, you're probably choosing between two options without realizing they were designed, fifty years ago, to be one.

The first is Crest Canyon. The official trailhead sits at Durango Drive and Del Mar Heights Road, though several informal access points run along Durango Drive itself. Trail apps list the loop at a flat 1.0 mile with about 150 feet of elevation gain, but that number only covers the shorter inner loop. Walk the full length of the canyon down to Racetrack View Drive and back, past the sandstone rim and the stand of native Torrey Pines, and you're closer to 2.2 miles. There's no designated parking lot and no restroom, which is part of why it stays uncrowded even on weekends. Part of the route runs along a sidewalk stretch protected for the endangered Dudleya brevifolia, a succulent found almost nowhere else, so a short section asks you to stay on pavement rather than the dirt shoulder.

The second is the River Path, which follows the San Dieguito Lagoon from the railroad tracks near Camino Del Mar out to the Grand Avenue Overlook. It's flat, it's popular with birders, and it dead-ends at the overlook. If you want to keep walking from there toward Crest Canyon, you can't, at least not on a built trail. You'd have to cut along San Dieguito Drive on the shoulder.

Here's the part that's easy to miss: these two trails were never meant to be separate walks. They're both segments of the same planned route.

The Half-Mile That's Waited Since 1976

Del Mar's 1976 Community Plan called for a continuous seven-mile Coastal Loop Trail circling the city. Most of it got built in pieces over the following decades. The last piece, a half-mile connector linking the Grand Avenue Overlook to the Crest Canyon trailhead, has been stuck in planning and funding limbo since at least 2022.

The holdup was money. City staff put the project's cost at $2.85 million, and as of a City Council review in September 2023, Del Mar had lined up only about half of it, a $725,000 pledge from the San Dieguito River Valley Conservancy and a $680,000 federal grant secured by Rep. Mike Levin. A $1.4 million gap remained. At that same meeting, Councilmember Terry Gaasterland told colleagues:

"We're looking at something that is going to bring joy to so many people's lives."

That was three years ago. According to the City of Del Mar's project page, the design is now finalized and construction is anticipated to begin this fall and run about four months. The new segment will use a mix of decomposed granite walkway and at-grade and elevated boardwalk, running along San Dieguito Drive to connect the two trail systems for the first time since the plan was drawn up.

Once it's built, a walk that currently ends at a parking lot will continue straight through to Crest Canyon, and from there, on toward Torrey Pines Extension and eventually the ocean. For a neighborhood where more than one home listing has advertised direct trail access to the lagoon as a selling point, this isn't a minor parks department update. It's the piece that turns two disconnected walks into an actual network.

What to Know Before You Go This Fall

A few things worth knowing if you're planning a walk in the coming weeks:

• Construction along San Dieguito Drive means expect some fencing, equipment staging, and possibly a temporarily narrowed shoulder near the Grand Avenue parking lot once work begins this fall.
• At San Dieguito County Park, the tot lot playground off Lomas Santa Fe Drive is currently closed for improvements, according to San Diego County's park notices page. The rest of the park, including Activity Hill's fitness stations, suspension bridges, and duck ponds, remains open.
• Starting tomorrow, dogs can run off-leash on North Beach (the section from 29th Street to the Solana Beach border) any time of day, a rule that holds through June 15. Leashes are still capped at six feet where required, and fines for violations start at $285.
• Day-use parking at San Dieguito County Park is $5, and the park is open 9:30 a.m. to sunset daily.

What Changes for the Daily Walk

The equestrian character of Rancho Del Mar means a lot of daily movement already happens on horseback or foot rather than pavement. The Del Mar Horse Park, a 65-acre facility at El Camino Real and Via de la Valle, reopened in 2023 under new management by HITS and now hosts Premier Hunter, CSI Jumper, and CDI dressage events that draw riders from well outside San Diego County. The San Diego Polo Club runs matches from May through October most Sundays in nearby Rancho Santa Fe. None of that changes this fall.

What does change is the walking loop. For years, the choice has been Crest Canyon or the lagoon, two separate outings with a car ride or a stretch of road walking in between. Once the half-mile connector opens, likely in early 2027 given a four-month build starting this fall, that choice disappears. It becomes one continuous route from the railroad tracks near Camino Del Mar, along the lagoon, past the Grand Avenue Overlook, into Crest Canyon, and out toward the coast.

That's not a small quality-of-life shift for a neighborhood that already treats its trails as an extension of the backyard. It's the completion of a plan the city has been chasing since before most current residents moved in.

I'm Marilyn Myers, and I spend as much time on these trails as I do in open houses. If you're weighing a move within Rancho Del Mar, or you know someone eyeing this corner of Del Mar for the space, the equestrian access, and yes, the trail network that's about to get a lot more complete, I'm happy to talk through what the neighborhood actually offers day to day. Reach out through Ranch & Coast Living anytime.