The Friends of San Pedro Valley Park extend our best wishes for a peaceful, safe and healthy 2022 to our loyal members and all of our park visitors. The park remains open to visitors without restriction.

The beginning of this new year does not bring us any encouraging news, however.  The Covid pandemic still rages on with the advent of the latest variant, omicron, resulting in a recent increase in the number of infections in San Mateo County.  As a result, the Visitor Center remains closed.  

And if you’ve been around the Visitor Center in recent months, you may have noticed various areas around the building exterior that have been torn open to inspect for the extent of water damage that was originally identified in early 2021. The amount of long-term damage has been found to be fairly extensive and the County is currently in the process of finalizing plans for reconstruction of the building and entering into an agreement with a contractor to begin repairs. Unfortunately, a timeline of activities has not yet been established and it is not yet known when work may get started or, more importantly, when the reconstruction is expected to be completed. This means that, regardless of the Covid pandemic status, the Visitor Center remains closed until further notice.  

Nevertheless, the Friends remain committed to holding our “Welcome Table” events outside the Visitor Center entrance as often as possible on weekends, weather permitting. The frequency of these events also depends on getting enough volunteers to staff them, which means that we’ve been able to hold our welcome table events about twice per month, typically on Sundays.  Visitor response has been quite good and encourages us to keep doing them.  

Finally, our monthly volunteer events, Trail Maintenance and Habitat Restoration, are continuing, unrestricted, on the 2nd Saturday and the 3rd Saturday of every month, respectively.  We continue to welcome new volunteers to supplement our core crews for these critical work sessions.  Come out and help us and leave feeling good that you’ve given something back to our wonderful and beautiful park.  

We look forward to seeing you at the park in 2022!