On-street parking on trails like Jesusita create a major safety concern for emergency personnel. 
Fencing and boulders make it impossible to create off-street parking for trail users. Without off-street parking, access to this trail is almost impossible. 
While vehicles now have additional places to park along Riven Rock, some of them are precariously close to the creek bank. 
In an attempt to reduce crowding, Public Works posted two-hour parking for a trail that takes almost all users longer than that to get out and back. 
Lighthearted sign near the trailhead encourages users to be respectful and use alternate forms of transportation. 
In addition to the vegetation along the road shoulders, in places where vehicles have parked in the past rock boulders make that impossible now. 
Homeowners also have placed “No Trespassing” signs as well to keep trail users from parking along Mountain Drive. 
In other spots, new vegetation has been planted to deter off-street parking. 
Parking at the Hot Springs trailhead is limited to eight vehicles at most. Trail users are at high risk for an accident when getting in and out of their vehicles. 
Because of the tight spacing, MarBorg or others often cannot get to the trash receptacles, creating health issues and attracting wildlife.
The trailhead leading up to the fabled Montecito Hot Springs is a bit over an arm’s width wide, akin to a cattle run bounded by chain link fences on either side.
Nearby parking is sparse, with barely room enough for six to eight vehicles.
Along either side of the trailhead, Mountain Drive is beautifully landscaped, with ancient oaks covering the roadway from either side, creating a more funnel-like feeling.
The shoulders are relatively flat, 15 feet or so wide, and perfect for parallel parking for all size vehicles.
Perfect except for the fact that most of the shoulders are covered with lush vegetation and ornamental rock. Much of this was planted years ago when nearby owners encroached into the road easements without permission or got permits to do so well before trailhead parking was an issue.
As a result, areas near the trailhead that could provide much-needed parking are completely blocked from public use.
Lure of the Hot Springs
The attraction that brings droves of visitors to Hot Springs Canyon are the aqua-colored pools situated in the upper part of the mountain wall, at a contact zone between several of the rock formations that make up the Santa Ynez Mountains.
The water that oozes up is hot, a bit over 100 degrees, perfect for a relaxed dip in the shade of the canyon vegetation. The walls surrounding each of the pools have been rebuilt after the debris flow in 2018, cascading down from one another to create a sanctuary of sorts.
Trail Access Becomes a Major Concern
But getting to the hot springs — and for that matter most of the front country trails —has become more and more difficult in recent years, and especially since COVID-19 restrictions were put in place in 2020.
With few parking spots adjacent to the Hot Springs trailhead, users have shifted to using narrow side roads such as Riven Rock Road to park, effectively turning it into a one-way street.
Predictably, this has not gone over well with the nearby homeowners, with complaints ranging from access to their homes to concerns about trash, increased noise and rowdy behavior.
In response, some homeowners have placed “No Trespassing” signs in multiple locations, along with boulders designed to block access.
Tempers have begun to flare. One long-time hiker who has circled by me several times looking for a spot tells me he’s lived here 20 years, and never had problem finding a place to park.
“What do I do now?” he asks.
A Transitory Phenomenon?
Sharon Byrne, executive director of the Montecito Association is hopeful that the overcrowding that has made Hot Springs a poster child for dysfunctional trail access will be a temporary problem that may go away as COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.
The current surge of the COVID-19 Delta variant may keep that from happening any time soon.
“We are dealing with something that we had never seen before,” she tells me in a phone interview. “It’s totally pandemic induced, right? It was totally a result of the pandemic.”
Byrne’s comments seem optimistic at best. The reality is that trailhead parking has been an ongoing issue for years. Once primarily a weekend issue, it has now become a seven-day-a-week headache.
County Advisor Committee Speaks Out
CRAHTAC, the County Riding and Hiking Trails Advisory Committee, became one of the first to speak out about trailhead access issues.
In a letter dated April 20, 2015, to Nancy Rapp, then the Santa Barbara City Parks and Recreation director, the committee brought up what it viewed as a growing problem.
“Parking has not kept up with the increasing numbers of trail users of all types on the trails today.
“On weekends especially, every trailhead parking area is filled to capacity with overflow parking often creating traffic and issues.”
Issues raised in the letter also included poorly designed and maintained trailheads; boulders placed in parking strip areas that could otherwise be used for parallel parking; and users forced to walk in the street, impeding traffic and creating unsafe conditions.
Who's Responsible for the Trailheads?
Coming to grips with who is actually responsible for maintaining or improving trailhead parking is a tangled mess at best.
While a few are located within the city of Santa Barbara, the majority of the front country trailheads fall along roadways that the Santa Barbara County Public Works Department is responsible for maintaining.
But while Public Works Director Scott McGolpin is sympathetic to those who would like to see more parking access, he tells me that off-street parking is not his responsibility.
“Our number one goal is is safety,” he emphasizes, “and the traveling public is what we're focused on.”
With almost 1,700 miles of roads in the county under his care, he has neither the budget nor the staff to deal with trailhead parking.
While expressing a willingness to do what he can to resolve the problem, county Parks Department Director Jeff Lindgren echoes a similar sentiment.
“While we have the responsibility for maintaining the trails,” he explains, “we don’t have control over the right-of-ways along the roadways.”
Neither is there much the Montecito Fire Protection District can do about the problem, given the district only becomes involved when new projects are being considered, but not once they’ve been completed.
Right-of-Ways and Roadways
From a casual point of view, it might seem like Public Works can or should play a major role, given that the department appears to have jurisdiction over the rights-of-way along most of the Montecito roadways.
Looking at the county’s parcel map and street centerline data illustrates the contrast between “what ought to be” and the actual reality.
Street centerlines more-or-less represent the line along which the yellow striped median follows. Typically the actual right-of-way for a road such as Mountain Drive could be as much as 60 feet.
A few weeks ago, I measured the width of the paved portion near the Hot Springs trailhead. It is slightly more than 25 feet wide, leaving more than 15 feet on either side for shoulder rights-of-way that ideally could be used for parking.
Wouldn’t it be possible to reclaim some or many of those, I wonder?
Politics at Play
Chris Sneddon, deputy Public Works director for transportation, acknowledged that these type of easements are typically 60 feet wide, but added, “It’s a lot more complicated than that.”
He noted that more than 80% of the roads in Montecito are legal, non-conforming — meaning that unless a major project that requires permitting occurs, the county really doesn’t have the ability to force the issue.
“Dealing with with parking along Mountain Drive is also going to be difficult from a financial perspective,” McGolpin said.
“Politically, you know, asking people to remove vegetation that has been there for a long time and makes Mountain Drive incredibly picturesque would be very difficult.”
Sneddon also explained that most of the landscape encroachments have been in place for decades.
“Many of the parcels may have been permitted far before the county began keeping records,” he said.
My guess is that Parks and Public Works might want to get together and look into who controls what when it comes to an understanding of what the county’s rights are regarding those rights-of-way.
Perhaps a review of parcels within a few hundred feet of each of the front country trailheads might help clarify what is possible and what isn’t. Not too costly given the possibilities this might yield.
Fire in the Mix
Making things even more complicated is the location of many of the trailheads at the edge of or within the wildland-urban interface.
Simply put, the potential for a major wildfire to occur near any of the local trailheads creates major challenges if users are parked illegally or blocking access in for firefighters.
“It’s a pretty awesome problem,” explained Montecito Fire Chief Kevin Taylor, “achieving a balance between the ability of the community members to escape their properties in an emergency, the critical need for emergency vehicles' ability to obtain access, and at the same time provide trail users the opportunity to park in a reasonable distance from the trail that they want recreate on.”
But Taylor is clear: “If forced to choose between the community’s ability to get out when there's a fire and fire’s ability to get in versus someone’s ability to access a trail, we're going to come down on access and egress every single time.”
According to the current fire code, the minimum width for roadways is 20 feet, with a vertical clearance of 13 feet 6 inches. When parking along Riven Rock Road turned it virtually into a one-way road, county Public Works white-stripped the narrow road to delineate that width at the request of Montecito Fire,.
To reduce parking pressures, Public Works also posted 2-hour limits at the main Hot Springs trailhead and County Parks also posted “daylight to sunset” use hours.
Moreover, it appears the California Highway Patrol is now writing warning citations to those parking within the roadways.
Pressures Lessen Slightly
Although only intended for emergency use during the pandemic, it appears these efforts have lessened the pressures somewhat for now.
Selective brushing along the creek side of Riven Rock now provides small openings between the trees that will now accommodate 12-14 additional vehicles off street, although the tall curb and narrow openings may keep some vehicles out.
But this is clearly an interim solution.
Getting in and out of the spots requires deft maneuvering to keep from scratching the door panels; in a few of them, the distance between safe parking and the front wheels going over the edge into Hot Springs Creek is just a matter of a few feet.
Long-Term Solutions
This may be a workable solution for the short term, but increased use of the trails and the demand for access is something that will not go away.
In 2000, informal user studies pegged the number of trail users along the front country to be in the neighborhood of 100,000 per year.
As noted by CRAHTAC, a more formal study completed in 2011 pushed that number to some 250,000. By 2021, it appears that number has grown far higher.
It's clear there are no easy solutions. The price tag for addressing the issue could be enormous and the politics difficult.
We may be at the point where there is simply not enough space to put everyone who wants to visit the trails — or at least that is the direction we seem to be heading.
Santa Barbara’s trails are no longer a local secret; visitors coming from as far away as Texas are now including destination hikes here as a part of their vacation itinerary. It appears that as the COVID-19 Delta variant spreads, local use may increase even more.
New vision is needed to move beyond white striping, citations and marginal improvements to the road shoulders.
A Seat at the Table
Several years ago, in the post-debris flow months, the time seemed perfect for a discussion regarding a management plan for the front-country trails, which in reality has none — or at least not on a coordinated basis.
Imagine an area that stretches from Goleta to Carpinteria and from the foothills to the crest, or extended to the Santa Ynez River — the heart of the front-country trails system — managed as a unified system, one that includes dozens of miles of trail and services hundreds of thousands of users each year.
I’m stumped trying to think of another place in all of California that would include so many precious resources, that is used by so many and is managed so haphazardly at best.
I proposed then — and think it more important now than ever — that the trails be managed as a single unit with agreements among the various agencies that would allow the development of a framework for managing the trails and a community-based blueprint to guide future direction.
Countywide Recreational Planning
Currently, under the direction of County Parks, the county is preparing a Countywide Recreation Master Plan, with the goal of providing a strategic planning program for parks, trails, and recreation facilities.
Key goals include assessing existing facilities, addressing unmet recreation needs, and identifying a range of recreation improvements.
The plan also envisions improved coordination and cooperation between the county, cities, agencies within the county, and nonprofit and private recreation service providers.
As the county begins to develop its recreational master plan, I would urge a vision that focuses on creation of regional, community-based management areas modeled in a fashion to the county’s community area plans.
Who Speaks for the Trails?
As the issues relating to trailhead parking demonstrate so clearly, responsibility for care of the trails is a fractured one.
So who speaks for the trails? Or the trailheads? Or the trail users? Or the land?
Perhaps a newly developed regional trail management area that provides a framework for unified management of the front country trails and management plan to provide a vision for the future will also provide solutions to unmet recreational needs such as trailhead parking and other issues that are not be dealt with today.
— Ray Ford is a Noozhawk outdoors writer. The opinions expressed are his own. Contact him at ray@sboutdoors.com.