The first three-quarters of a mile of the Edward Albert Escondido Canyon Trail is not a trail. It is your street. The hike to Lower Escondido Falls begins just off Pacific Coast Highway and travels uphill for 0.75 miles along Winding Way, a paved road that passes extravagant Malibu residences. For the roughly one hundred households living on that stretch, this is the defining feature of the neighborhood: an ocean-view lane that also happens to be the approach to the multi-tiered 150-foot Escondido Falls, the highest in the Santa Monica Mountains.
That arrangement has held for decades. This summer, for the first time, it is quietly being rewritten. A California Coastal Commission agreement finalized last June opens a second, parallel route to the falls that does not begin on your driveway. Whether you notice the change in July of 2026 or in July of 2028, the rhythm of the neighborhood is about to shift.
The trail that starts at your driveway
Residents already read the sidewalk the way surfers read the swell. Cars parked along PCH before nine on a Saturday, folded strollers coming up the hill, a queue at the small porta-potty near the lot: these are the tells that the trail is running full. The trail itself is deceptively modest on paper. The Edward Albert Trail through Escondido Canyon Natural Area leads hikers, mountain bikers, and equestrians 4.2 miles through oak woodland, riparian woodland, and Coastal sage scrub to the spectacular, multi-tiered 150-foot Escondido Falls, and it draws crowds that are wildly out of proportion to the width of the road they travel to get there.
The namesake matters here, and most weekend visitors do not know it. Edward Albert, the only son of actor Eddie Albert of the sitcom "Green Acres," died at age 55 in 2006, and prior to his death he was a tireless advocate for preserving Escondido Canyon. The trail bears his name because his work is the reason the canyon is public land at all. If you have lived on Winding Way for any length of time, you have probably met neighbors who knew him.
What actually changed in June 2025
The last eighteen months have been unusual. In early January of 2025, officials ordered the closure of parks, trails, and public accessways within and immediately adjacent to the City of Malibu under the jurisdiction of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority in response to the Palisades Fire state of emergency. Escondido Canyon Park was among them. For most of the first half of 2025, the loudest sound on the paved stretch of Winding Way was landscaping.
That ended in mid-June. Under the MRCA's amended closure order, the closures were lifted for most parks on June 16, 2025, and by that July hikers were confirming on the ground that Escondido Canyon Park had reopened. The Yelp listing still carries a "temporarily closed" tag that has not been updated, which is why a certain number of would-be visitors turn around at PCH; the park itself has been open for a full year.
The second, more consequential change was reported by KBUU on June 30, 2025.
The California Coastal Commission has reached an agreement with a homeowner that could open up another trail from Pacific Coast Highway to Escondido Falls, near Meadows Court, a cul-de-sac off PCH just about across the road from Geoffrey's restaurant. The agreement will open up a trail from the highway through the Meadows Court subdivision to access Escondido Canyon Park, including Escondido Falls. The state says this new trail will alleviate congestion along other trails, including Winding Way.
The state saying the quiet part out loud is what makes this notable. For years, the tacit position of the agencies was that Winding Way was the only realistic access point, and residents adjusted accordingly. A second access route, one that never touches your street, is a policy change that will show up first in your weekend traffic count and eventually in how buyers describe the neighborhood.
Reading the weekend from a Winding Way window
Until the Meadows Court easement is actually built and open, timing is still the resident's best tool. The rhythm of the trail is more legible than it looks:
- Falls flow follows rain by days, not weeks. The waterfall is dependent on rainfall and is minimal or non-existent during dry weather. By mid-July in a normal year, the lower falls are a trickle and the crowds thin. In wet springs, the surge lasts into June.
- The $12 lot fills before the marine layer burns off. The parking lot at Winding Way costs $12.00, and on peak weekends it is full by mid-morning. That is when overflow spills onto PCH shoulders and the sidewalk pressure on the neighborhood peaks.
- Weekday mornings belong to residents. The trail is quietest between Tuesday and Thursday before ten, and the ocean views on the paved climb are cleaner without haze.
- Bus arrivals matter more than they used to. The trail is transit accessible via Metro bus 534, and the stop near Winding Way delivers waves of hikers on a predictable interval that a resident who walks the loop enough will start to notice.
None of this is available on the popular trail apps, which lump Escondido into the same bucket as trails with real parking lots. If you actually live here, you have a data set no visitor has.
The short list of places that anchor the week
The trail is the loudest feature of the neighborhood, but it is not the one residents build their week around. A few nearby anchors do more of that work.
Escondido Beach at the low tide window
The beach directly across PCH is the reason the hillside sits where it does. Public access is limited and the tide chart, not the calendar, tells you when the sand widens enough for a real walk. Residents who read the tides get a private-feeling beach a few days a week; visitors who read a map get a narrow strip and a locked gate.
Paradise Cove and Geoffrey's
The other constant is the two-minute drive east or west. Geoffrey's is now doubly relevant because the future Meadows Court trailhead will sit almost directly across PCH from it, which will change the character of that particular stretch of highway on weekends in ways that are hard to predict. Paradise Cove, at the other end, absorbs the visitors who wanted a Malibu beach day and did not find parking at the falls.
The Trancas and Country Mart run
The everyday errand loop still runs to Trancas Country Market at the western edge and the Malibu Country Mart to the east. Neither is on Winding Way, and that is the point. The neighborhood has almost no commercial footprint of its own, which is why the paved trail approach is so conspicuous: it is the only place where the public and private lives of the street overlap.
A season worth watching
Two things are true at once this summer. Escondido Canyon Park is open again after a fire year that shut it down. And the state has, on paper, committed to a second trailhead that will meaningfully reduce the hiker load on your street. The first is a return to normal. The second is not.
If you have lived on Winding Way through several summers, you have already watched the trail become more popular, the falls become more Instagrammed, and the paved climb become a de facto public promenade. The Meadows Court agreement is the first structural change in the other direction. It will not be finished this year. It may not be finished next year. It is worth knowing about now because it is the sort of detail that shapes a neighborhood in slow motion, and residents who are paying attention early tend to be the ones who benefit from it later.
Winding Way has always traded a small amount of daily foot traffic for an outsized amount of privacy on the parcel itself. The trade is about to get better. For anyone thinking about the long-term value of a house on this hillside, or for anyone simply planning a summer of walks to Escondido Beach that avoid the Saturday parking spillover, that is the update worth holding onto.
If you would like a private conversation about how these long-arc changes read against a specific address on Winding Way or Murphy Way, Sandro Dazzan and the Malibu team at The Agency are available to Book a Private Consultation.
