San Onofre's Wave Is Still There. This Winter, You Get to It on Foot or by Bike

"We're enjoying it for the emptiness, but also hoping to return it to what it was," San Clemente pro surfer Pat Gudauskas told the Orange County Register after a three-generation family walk down to an empty San Onofre Surf Beach. He called the place "a key history piece to San Clemente's surf culture."

The emptiness comes from one decision. On Oct. 29, California State Parks said the dirt road and lower parking at Surf Beach will stay closed to cars through at least spring. The notice gives no repair date. State Parks plans to watch the coast "throughout the winter" and reassess the lower lots in the spring. So the season ahead is a waiting period, and whatever is still standing in spring decides what comes next. Until then, San O is a beach you walk or ride into.

A lot that has been shrinking for ten years

The closure is the latest step in a long retreat. The Register's report traces the trouble to the 2015–2016 El Niño, which eroded so much of the beach that State Parks added about 900 feet of rock revetment in 2017 to hold part of the lot in place. Since then, beachfront parking has dropped from 330 spaces to 160, and fewer than that in recent months.

This fall moved faster. A hurricane swell cut away a section of road near the entrance, and the road closed on Oct. 7. Late in October, tides ran about 20 inches higher than the tide charts predicted and deepened the erosion at a weak point just south of a seawall. State Parks blamed high surf, elevated tides and Kelvin wave activity, and said that with El Niño conditions in the forecast, "the lower parking areas remain highly vulnerable to further damage."

Waiting until spring is a sensible call when the season ahead is expected to do the most damage. It also means the winter routine has to change for everyone.

What is open when you get there

The October notice from State Parks lays out the current setup:

• The beach itself is open to surfers, pedestrians and bicyclists.
• The small upper paved lot is open to cars, but space is limited and State Parks warns that waits "may be significant."
• Restroom 1, at the bottom of the hill in the northernmost part of the lower dirt lot, has reopened. It is the only working restroom at Surf Beach.
• Winter hours are 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on the State Parks San Onofre page. The park's infosheet lists day-use parking at $15 per vehicle, or $20 on holidays and summer weekends.

To get there from town, take Interstate 5 to Basilone Road, about three miles south of San Clemente. Heading south on Basilone, the Surf Beach entrance at Old Man's is a turnout on the right before you reach the power plant. That upper lot is the only parking at Surf Beach itself, and with so few spaces, getting there early makes a difference.

Parking at the Bluffs and riding in

State Parks is pointing visitors south, telling them to "park at the nearby Trails area and bicycle to Surf Beach." Its Oct. 15 storm update added another option, rideshare drop-off at the top, and asked visitors to plan ahead and travel light.

The Trails area has its own restrictions right now. The Scales Fire started along Interstate 5 near San Onofre on Oct. 16 and was held to about 20 acres. After the fire, State Parks reopened the two northernmost San Onofre Bluffs parking lots to cars, pedestrians and bikes. Everything south of the Trail 1 lot stays closed to all traffic, including bicycles. If you're parking to ride north, you'll be using the lots at the north end of the Bluffs, near Trail 1.

Many San Clemente surfers can skip the car completely. The California Coastal Trail describes a paved bike route that starts at Avenida del Presidente, crosses to the west side at Cristianitos Road, and then follows Basilone Road and the Bluffs Campground road. That puts Surf Beach on a route that begins at the south end of town. The Oct. 15 update asked visitors to stay out of areas marked unsafe or under construction, and that applies on a bike too.

The dates between now and spring

The closure isn't the only thing that will shape a San O session this winter. Training on Camp Pendleton and three king tide windows land on dates you can plan around.

The California King Tides Project publishes these statewide dates and links to a tide map with local times. The first two land around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Kevin Carlin, who stood on the broken edge of the road the morning the ocean took more of it, told the Register that with El Niño and holiday-season king tides coming, "It's going to take a hammering."

Whatever those three tide windows take from the road is what State Parks will be looking at when it reassesses the lower lots in spring.

What is being designed for afterward

While the lower lot sits closed, the long-term plan is already in the works. In November 2024, the California State Coastal Conservancy authorized up to $1 million to Surfrider Foundation for studies, design of alternatives, community engagement and early nature-based design work to protect access to Surf Beach. The work became the San Onofre Shoreline Resilience Project. Its partners are California State Parks, Surfrider, the San Onofre Surfing Club, the San Onofre Parks Foundation and the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians.

The San Clemente Times reported that the project's third and final public assembly of this phase, held Nov. 7 at the San Clemente State Beach Historic Cottage, was set to present a preferred nature-based adaptation strategy. The strategy was built from community feedback, shoreline studies and modeling. Nature-based approaches try to work with natural shoreline processes rather than relying only on hard armoring. Surfrider followed up with a virtual lunch-and-learn on Nov. 9 for people who missed the evening session.

Earlier ideas suggest how parking itself might change. A July project update from Surfrider floated an interim concept of turning the current queuing lot into overflow parking and moving the queue elsewhere. It also sketched possible trail routes along the top of the bluff. These were discussion concepts, not an adopted plan. State Parks, for its part, says it is working with Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, which owns the land, along with community groups and other stakeholders, to look at alternative access and parking areas and longer-term fixes for the erosion.

The beach's long-term status is secure. In August 2024, State Parks, the Navy and Camp Pendleton announced a new 25-year lease for San Onofre State Beach, signed a day before the old agreement ran out. The open questions are where cars will park and how people will get down to the sand, and the planning now underway is about those two things.

Surf Beach still has the long, gentle waves that brought surfers to a fish camp in the 1930s and turned it into the mainland's first surf camp. This winter, getting to them means a bike from the Bluffs or town, a drop-off at the top, or a wait for one of the few spaces in the upper lot. Check the State Parks San Onofre page before you load the boards, because conditions there can change after any big tide.

At The Forum Group, we follow changes to San Clemente's coast as closely as we follow its home sales. Beach access, parking and the plans for places like San O all shape what living here is like every day. If you'd like to talk through how these changes affect your part of town, Request a Complimentary Market Consultation with Mitchel Bohi and the team.