Unhappy Trails : Recent Storms Have Left Treacherous Paths for Mountain Hikers

TOPANGA — It was an idyllic day for a hike--warm, clear, fresh. Birds chirped in the verdant canyon, splashed by nature’s paintbrush with the first blooms of spring. The gurgling creek, swollen with abundant rainwater, cascaded over rock falls.

But for a recent Hermosa Beach visitor to Topanga State Park, the serenity of a walk in the wilds became a painful lesson in treachery.

Sidling along a sliver of the trail gouged out by torrential rainstorms, Maureen Garcia slipped down a gravelly embankment, breaking a wrist and an ankle. Rescuers had to carry the 59-year-old family therapist half a mile out of the canyon on a litter, and twin casts now remind her of her abandon to caution.

“I knew it would be beautiful up there--gorgeous and green,” said Garcia. Though she describes herself as a novice hiker, she said she never considered the path dangerous. “There were lots of people there doing fine. I guess I was just a little too self-assured.”

Garcia’s experience is a somber warning that sunshiny days may still cloak a nasty surprise. Trails ringing the Southland have been badly eroded by washouts and blocked by rockslides.

“We’ve had a lot of damage all over,” said Russ Guiney, Malibu Sector superintendent for the state Department of Parks and Recreation. “We advise people to be careful out there. They need to exercise some caution.”

Regionwide statistics are not available, but federal officials estimate that storm damage repairs to the 200 miles of trails in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area alone will cost more than $250,000 and take until the end of summer to complete. More than 550,000 people visit the 22,000-acre national parkland annually.

State and county officials said it is still too soon to assess the damage’s toll on their trails, but asked that mountain bike enthusiasts and equestrians stay off muddy trails until they fully dry to prevent further damage.

Almost all are still passable on foot, although the going can be tedious, officials warned. Streams now cross many usually dry trails through canyons and meadows, and waterfalls have cropped up in unexpected places.

“The creeks are not dangerous; they are not going to sweep anybody away,” Guiney said. “But people are going to get their feet wet if they intend to hike in the mountains.”

A few trails, particularly in areas of the San Gabriel Mountains denuded by the 1993 wildfires above Altadena, have been closed temporarily even to hikers. In the Santa Monica Mountains, a road from the Circle X Ranch area into Happy Hollow Campground near Agoura will remained closed to vehicles throughout the summer, a park official said.

In Big Tujunga Canyon above Sunland, several trails are impassable because of the high volume of water still rushing out of the San Gabriel Mountains, said Julie Molzahn, a district recreation officer for the Angeles National Forest.

While the Big Tujunga Canyon River offers a particularly abundant catch of trout right now, visitors need to be mindful of sudden rises in the water level due to periodic flushing of debris out of the flood-control reservoir above, Molzahn said. Dam keepers have been issuing five-minute warnings of an oncoming surge by sounding a horn blast each time they open the floodgates to clean out the reservoir.

“People should use caution anywhere in the forest right now,” Molzahn said, adding that rangers have not yet been able to assess the condition of the 250 miles of trails in the mountains above the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys.

Partial closures also have been posted sporadically along portions of more than 300 miles of trails maintained by Los Angeles County, said Jim Compos, head of county trails maintenance.

He said budget cuts have reduced his manpower by half--to only six workers for the entire county. Most of the trail repair and maintenance is provided by volunteer groups of mountain bike riders, equestrians and youth groups such as the Boy Scouts. A major, countywide cleanup is planned April 29 and 30 in celebration of California Trails Day.

“As soon as the sun comes out, a lot of disgruntled people want us to open the trails,” Compos said. “We’re jumping back and forth to all the hot spots as quickly as possible. We just want to be sure people can get through safely.”

In addition to areas of Altadena, portions of trails are also closed in La Canada Flintridge and in the Santa Susana Mountains above the west San Fernando Valley, he said.

Representatives of several biking and equestrian groups said excursions had to be canceled in March because of rain and subsequent destruction along trails.

“A bunch of the trail is washed away, and we couldn’t even get into the staging area,” said Gwen Allen, a spokeswoman for Equestrian Trails Inc. The group canceled a 10-mile ride last month over Los Pinetos Trail, which runs from Sylmar to Placerita Canyon State Park in the Santa Clarita Valley.

A separate outing planned by the Arabian Horse Assn. of the San Fernando Valley was canceled twice last month, first because of rain, then again on a sunny weekend when the trails up Little Tujunga Canyon in Sunland were found impassable.

Countywide, sheriff’s emergency teams respond to more than 900 general rescues a year, ranging from plucking stranded or injured adventurers out of the bottom of a canyon to interceding in the birth of premature babies, said Lt. Brock Simon of the special enforcement bureau emergency services.

Separate statistics are not compiled for trail-related rescues, but Simon said 10 rescue operations in March--higher than normal--stemmed largely from skiers and other recreation enthusiasts who got into trouble as a result of the unusually heavy snowfall in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Despite the hazards and warnings to take precautions, parks officials said they are expecting large numbers of visitors, drawn by predictions of unusually abundant wildflowers, the colorful reward for the winter’s marathon storms.

“We are going to have a real nice wildflower display,” said Guiney, the state parks spokesman. “Now is the time to see the giant coreopsis.”

The yellow, daisy-like flowers are expected to continue blooming for another month along the Pacific Coast Highway from Point Mugu west to the Oxnard plain.

Other wildflowers will peak throughout the region within two to three weeks, officials said.