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Web of Water Trails

Two years ago, Michael Casey Walker Esq. and three of his kayaking buddies got worried that boom-time development creeping south down the San Francisco bayshore (Pac Bell Park, Mission Creek, U.C. Campus etc.) would cut off their local access points to the water. "I used to be a river runner, but getting through the Bay Area traffic hassles to the Sierra took hours," he says. "I can get to the Bay from my house in eight minutes."

Walker and his buddies launched a group called Bay Access Inc. in 2000 to promote creation of a S.F. Bay Water Trail. "Most planners think of access to the Bay as access to a riprap shore where people can look down on the water, not touch it. It's time they realized that going out on the water is not just for big power boats needing big expensive marinas, but also for inexpensive human-powered boats like ours," he says.

Water trails are now flourishing across the country, trails such at the Cascadia Marine Trail in the Puget Sound, but Walker says many of these are largely "linear" trails going from A to B, and even providing overnight camping along the way. His group's vision is for much more of a "web," where kayakers can crisscross from different access points ("A to F") on day trips.

This April, the group organized a Sausalito Bay Model conference to bring national water trail expertise to bear on the local situation. Sixty people attended the conference, among them water users, shoreline landowners and agency managers. The group has also earned the promise of technical help with its trail development from the National Park Service's Rivers & Trails program.

Next steps, says Walker, are to develop an action plan, conduct outreach to government agencies that control most shoreline parks and refuges, and publish a map of a first phase Bay water trail linking already well-established points of access. "We want to build recognition for this kind of recreation on the Bay, and make sure current access points are preserved and recognized as part of a system, so they are less likely to be removed in the future," says Walker. Issues that will need to be resolved include how to keep the trail wildlife sensitive (and not disturb nesting birds, for example) and how to provide shoreline parking for wheels hauling boats.

Contact: Michael Casey Walker (415)337-7864 or www.watertrails.org ARO

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