There is a ton of public land in Monterey County. Good luck accessing it.

Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer. That is a bit of a celebration for the hospitality industry.

That is also true in Big Sur, where hotel and restaurant owners are grateful that 24/7 access on Highway 1 at Rocky Creek opened on Friday, May 17, ahead of schedule. The initial Caltrans projection of opening on Monday, May 27, felt to many like a taunt: Why hustle if you’re going to wait until the end of a busy holiday weekend?

In a separate hustle anticipating the unofficial start of summer, Chevene Simmons, recreation officer for the Monterey District of the Los Padres National Forest, has been looking at the myriad public recreation destinations most popular this season. “My plan was always to have a plan by Memorial Day for opening major recreational sites in our district,” he says. “My plan was never to have everything open by then.”

Far from everything will be open by then. Some closures have been in effect for years, mostly related to roads.

Two Forest Service campgrounds on the eastern side of the Santa Lucia Mountains near Fort Hunter Liggett are closed while Nacimiento-Fergusson Road remains closed – since January 2021 – to vehicles for ongoing construction. (I was under the impression that the lower campground, Ponderosa remained open, but Simmons says that was a mistake – somebody, unauthorized, moved the gate. Now it’s back where it should be, with a sign proclaiming that the forest is closed.)

“I would anticipate before the end of summer there will be some indication on when and if those two campgrounds will be available,” Simmons says.

Arroyo Seco Road, the only access road to the popular Arroyo Seco Recreation Area, closed in March of 2023 due to storm damage. While the County’s Public Works Department announced on April 18 that it was again open to the public, the Forest Service doesn’t yet know when the day use area and campground will reopen. (There is still an active slide area and falling rock – while the county has installed K-rail and fencing to capture the debris, it looks like a construction zone, says Public Works Director Randy Ishii. Simmons says the road is not yet in condition to accommodate large trailers, or long lines of hundreds of vehicles waiting to get to the gorge on hot summer weekends.)

The County got Arroyo Seco Road open in a little over a year, but the public is waiting to regain access to public lands. Meanwhile public lands on the other side of the mountains at Bottchers Gap remain open for recreation – but the upper part of the road to get there, Palo Colorado, has been closed for seven years. The County’s budget to fix what still needs fixing is $17 million, and Ishii says there’s roughly a $15 million shortfall. Meanwhile campgrounds like White Oaks and China Camp located along Tassajara Road in Carmel Valley are not closed, but Tassajara Road has been closed to vehicles for over a year – meaning you can walk in if you want to get there lawfully.

If you’re frustrated, you’re not alone. I’m with you, for one. These are our public lands, but we can’t even get to them.

Simmons is also frustrated. “There’s frustration all around, not just from the public, but from us as we try to get some transparent answers,” he says of ongoing road work.

Meanwhile in Big Sur, California State Parks is on track to reopen all 189 campsites at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park on Thursday, May 23, just in time for Memorial Day, but almost four weeks after Highway 1 began allowing public traffic. State Parks issued refunds for roughly 3,000 campsites during this closure period. (The delay, Monterey District Superintendent Brent Marshall says, is due to staffing back up and getting utilities restored. “We are working diligently to shift our operations from emergency support back to our regular campground activities,” he writes.)

Even when roads are open, access is another issue. For example, a trail to Pfeiffer Falls, a gem in the redwoods of Pfeiffer Big Sur was closed due to a fire in 2008 and finally reopened in June of 2021. But it lasted just briefly – that beautiful, accessible trail closed again in January 2023 due to a fallen tree on a bridge. The new timeline to reopen the trail is 2025.

Sara Rubin is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com