Signs are going up again where Salson Trail meets the open space south of Sugarloaf. City crews returned to the site on October 15 for final stabilization and remediation. While the work lasts, the trail is closed from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and stays open outside those hours. The work traces back to the December 2022 and January 2023 storms. Heavy flow overtopped a 48-inch culvert under the trail, eroded the banks and collapsed much of the emergency access road.
This is one of the last pieces of a repair cycle that has run through Belmont's open space since those storms. It is wrapping up just as the federal Climate Prediction Center expects a strong to very strong El Niño through early 2027. Most of the rebuilt ground will face its first serious wet season in the next few months. How the people who use these trails treat them on rainy days will matter more this year than it usually does.
What the 2023 Storms Broke, and What Has Been Rebuilt
The repair record is spread across several city project pages and the archive of Waterdog Open Space Stewards. Put in order, it looks like this:
| When | Where | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| February 2020 | Lake Loop trail, Waterdog | Volunteers fixed a drainage problem in a project that took 24 people more than 120 hours |
| January 2023 | Waterdog | After storm damage, every Waterdog trail reopened except Chaparral Trail, with warnings about fallen trees and erosion |
| Late 2025 | Salson Trail | Culvert repair finished. The city and state regulators then identified additional work |
| March 21, 2026 | Rambler Trail, Waterdog | Belmont Parks & Recreation and Trail Center scheduled repairs on half a mile of trail |
| 2026 | Twin Pines Park | Belmont Creek Restoration Project declared complete |
| October 15, 2026 | Salson Trail | Final site stabilization began, with daytime closures for about two weeks |
The Chaparral closure describes conditions in early 2023, not today. The Stewards' archive has no newer closure notice after it.
The Salson Trail project took the longest. Salson is an unpaved fire road near East Laurel Creek Road. It gives firefighters emergency access to about 100 acres of open space along a tributary of Laurel Creek. The city put the repair out to bid in May 2025 and awarded it to WestRock Engineering. Once that work was done in late 2025, Belmont and California regulators identified more repairs needed for long-term stability. That is the work happening now.
The San Juan Canyon page still shows the earlier schedule, with work running from early August to mid-October and a closure about 150 feet west of the Bartlett Way trailhead. The Public Works project page has the October 15 update, and the city says signs will be posted at access points wherever the trail ahead is closed. The notice gave a two-week window starting October 15, so the posted signs are the best guide to whether crews are still there this week.
The Creek at Twin Pines Is New Ground, Too
Downhill from Waterdog, the Twin Pines Park Belmont Creek Restoration Project now carries the label "2026 UPDATE -- PROJECT COMPLETED." The city plans to monitor and maintain the site for the next five years to confirm the project is working as intended.
The project covered about 550 to 1,600 linear feet of Belmont Creek inside the park. Crews removed invasive plants, regraded eroded banks, replanted them with riparian vegetation, and stabilized the banks and channel bottom. One stated goal was better creek viewing and educational opportunities for park visitors. Funding came from a $1,000,000 Urban Streams Restoration Grant from the California Department of Water Resources, plus $600,000 from Belmont's Measure I, the City of San Carlos and San Mateo County.
This connects the creek to the trails. According to the San Mateo Daily Journal, Belmont Creek starts at Water Dog Lake and runs about three miles through downtown, passing under Sixth Avenue and El Camino Real on its way toward the Bay. The city's project page says the creek had degraded from urban runoff, channelization and bank erosion. Sediment from that erosion settles in the flatter stretches downstream. The newly planted banks at Twin Pines will face their first big storms this winter.
What NOAA Said on October 8
The Climate Prediction Center's ENSO Diagnostic Discussion of October 8, 2026 has an El Niño Advisory in effect. It says El Niño is still strengthening, and the chance of a strong to very strong event through January–March 2027 is above 83%.
The same discussion gives the odds of a historic event, one stronger than any El Niño on record since 1950:
- 54% for September through November
- 83% for October through December
- 70% for November through January
NOAA also notes that an event this strong raises the odds of typical El Niño impacts but doesn't guarantee them. The next discussion is scheduled for November 12, 2026. The Rambler Trail repair and the Twin Pines creek banks, both finished in 2026, will go through their first full wet season under that outlook, and the Salson stabilization work finishes just ahead of it.
The Rule That Protects the Repairs
Belmont's open space rules are short. The line that matters most this winter is printed on the San Juan Canyon page:
Stay off wet trails. If you leave a tire or footprint, it is too wet.
You can check it with your own shoe at the trailhead, without waiting on a closure notice. The same page asks visitors to stay off closed sections and never move or go around barriers or signs. On the city's Waterdog page, the rules are that wheels yield to heels, users announce themselves and ride at safe speeds, everyone stays on marked trails and respects closures, and dogs stay on leash.
Hours are worth knowing as the evenings get darker. Belmont's general parks schedule runs from 30 minutes before sunrise to 30 minutes after sunset unless a site says otherwise. Waterdog and San Juan Canyon both list sunrise to sunset. Once the clocks change in early November, the after-work loop at Waterdog gets much shorter.
Where Each Trailhead Puts You
When one area is soft, it helps to know the other ways in. The city lists these starting points:
| Trailhead | Address | Connects to |
|---|---|---|
| Waterdog at Hallmark & Lake Road | Hallmark Drive and Lake Road | Waterdog Lake Park trails |
| Waterdog at Lyall Way | 2400 Lyall Way, near Lake Road | Waterdog Lake Park trails |
| Hidden Canyon Park | 2642 Carlmont Drive | Open space trails into Waterdog |
| San Juan Canyon | 4122 Marsten Avenue; lower gate at 3500 Bartlett Way | 35 acres of trails linked to Sugarloaf Open Space |
Posts from the Stewards name four trails inside Waterdog: Lake Loop, Lake Road Trail, Rambler and Chaparral. According to the city, part of the open space is also called the John Brooks Memorial Open Space. Two of those have recent repair records. Lake Loop had its drainage fixed in 2020, and Rambler got half a mile of work in March 2026.
Who Fills the Ruts
When Waterdog gets damaged, volunteers do much of the fixing. The Stewards say plainly that Belmont's Parks and Recreation Department lacks the resources for labor-intensive trail maintenance, and that volunteers fill the gap under the department's approval and supervision. From February 2019 to February 2021, they logged 40 trail maintenance days, more than 800 volunteer hours and 183 volunteers. Most came from the mountain biking community, and the largest group is the Waterdog Trailkeepers.
Waterdog Open Space Stewards describes itself as a community of hikers, cyclists and dog walkers focused on accessible, sustainable recreation. Its Take Action page explains how to volunteer for trail work. Last month the group also posted a reminder to skip riding at Waterdog the morning of the September 26 Water Dog Run, because of the crowds.
These trails get fixed by people who give up their Saturdays to do it. A footprint left in wet ground in January becomes one more rut for those volunteers to repair in spring. To ask about the Twin Pines creek work or the monitoring that runs through the next five years, the city lists Daniel Matthews at [email protected]. For Salson Trail, Public Works takes calls at 650-595-7425.
Debbie Livingston follows the local projects that shape everyday life in Belmont, from the creek restoration at Twin Pines to the trail work above Carlmont. If you're wondering how projects like these affect your part of town, Debbie Livingston is happy to walk through it with you. Let's Connect.
