Revisiting the Monks Trail - Part I

The Monks Trail.  The Seaview Trail.  The Seaview Loop.  The Seaview Loop Trail. The Mount Washington Back Road.  The Old Fire Trail.  Mount Washington’s west side walking trail might go by many names but it is universally beloved by her residents.

Approximately 300 of those trail lovers decided to pay it a visit on the second Sunday of spring.

I’m exaggerating, of course.  At 9:30 a.m., it was probably in the low two hundreds.

A previous column about the generated reader requests for more detailed information.  Accordingly, I arranged to meet Lynnette Kampe, Executive Director of the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers and Native Plants for an informed stroll along the path.

I always start at the higher-up-the-Hill Seaview Avenue entrance to the Monks Trail.  However, no matter how many times I hike it,  I’m always surprised by how far the trail’s chain-barred entrance is from the school-adjacent, San Rafael Avenue/Danforth Avenue/Seaview Avenue  junction.  (According to my six-foot-tall husband, it’s 540 paces; for Mini-Me…about three thousand.)  As a result, at 9:20 a.m., I was chugging frantically along the winding road like a Reebok-clad locomotive so as not to be late.

My furious (relatively speaking) pace got me to the meeting point early where I chatted with Seaview residents who love the trail and expressed the fervent hope that visitors would love and respect it as well by picking up after their dogs (and themselves) and especially, by refraining from smoking.

As Lynnette arrives and we start down the path, I understand the residents’ concern: the trail might have started as a fire road for the historic homes on Seaview Lane but at this point, it’s just about wide enough for a push cart and a hand-held hose.  The wet winter has resulted in an explosion of flammable vegetation; all it needs is a careless spark to cause a catastrophic conflagration.

As we walk, Kampe points out native plants that she and fellow Mount Washington Association board member Jerry Schneider were instrumental in starting on the lower slope.  The Bee’s Bliss, with its grey foliage and blue-purple flowers,  and the yellow-bloomed Desert Bush Sunflower not only brighten the path with color but are drought tolerant and a low fire hazard.  Ideally, the native plants will spread to replace the invasive, non-native grasses, which go up “like tinder” according to Kampe.

An early stop along the trail is the trailside marker for Bob Scholfield Park.   Real estate agent Scholfield was an early (1940's) resident of Seaview Lane and he loved the land and the trail.  Sharing Scholfield’s dream that the hillside would “stay green forver”, his neighbors Adel and Doss Mabe and Ann Dudrow bought the lots below the trail and donated them to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

Adel Mabe remembers that Scholfield would regularly “borrow” his neighbor’s dog for walks along the trail; when Scholfield was diagnosed with cancer in 2001, Mabe herself was dogged in her determination have the land designated as a “park in spirit” and memorialized with the yellow stone that Bob loved. Scholfield “attended” the dedication from his patio above the trail.  He died just days later.

After stopping to remember Scholfield and his love-of-the-land legacy, we continue on to the sunset-friendly  bench:  one of many that Kampe and Schneider stationed around the Hill.  Depending on the time of year, you can still see the ocean at sunset: a “glint of gold” in the distance, according to Kampe who notes that sometimes, the best vantage point is achieved by standing on the higher elevation away from the trail edge.

A few steps on, Downtown’s skyscrapers are perfectly framed in a notch of hills.  Surrounded by the green of the trail, they seem a million miles away.

Just as Bob Scholfield would have wanted it.

Stay tuned next week for The Trail Winds On: Part Two of Monks Trail Revisited.