A WALK IN THE WOODS

Along Grizzly Flat Trail, there are mountain tops for skyscrapers and waterfalls for swimming pools, pines for telephone poles and sunshine for fluorescents. It’s not exotic, but it allows a city dweller to step quietly away from rush hour for a few moments that could make a difference.

When traffic and crowds become unbearable in Los Angeles, most people pack up the family and get away from it all by going to the beach, which is strange, because what they usually encounter is more traffic and more crowds, not to mention those nasty ultraviolet rays and grains of sand that always find their way into egg-salad sandwiches.

Not as many people head for the mountains. In the song “I Love L. A.,” Randy Newman enjoys “rollin’ down the Imperial Highway,” but all he wants to do, like almost everybody else, is “look at that mountain,” almost as if it’s a Hollywood set that you’re not allowed to reach out and touch.

In the Valley, it’s hard not to look at the mountains unless you live between a couple of high-rise office buildings on Ventura Boulevard. There are the Santa Monica Mountains to the south, the Santa Susana and San Gabriel mountains to the north. Granted, when you’re in the mountains, you can’t ride the waves or check out the bikinis or Speedos through your Ray-Bans. But you can really get away from it all.

One day recently, when the smog lifted and the mountains reappeared like Brigadoon, a city slicker decided to return to nature. Roughing it at the Galleria wasn’t going to pacify him. He was going to take a hike in the mountains. Out there, somewhere beyond Burbank, in a place that doesn’t have a Versateller.

The Angeles National Forest stretches from the Ventura County line to the San Bernardino County line, nearly 700,000 rugged acres in the San Gabriel Mountains. If you live in the Valley, the forest is your backyard, and it’s usually easier and quicker to drive there than downtown. One of the most accessible areas in the forest is Big Tujunga Canyon, which is only a few miles from the Sunland exit on the 210 freeway.

Warning: Even if you have mastered the Los Angeles freeway system and can survive by yourself on Hollywood Boulevard, don’t treat the mountains like a Sunday stroll through the neighborhood park. People have been known to get lost in the Angeles Forest, even though civilization was just around the next bend. Bring a compass, wear boots, don’t wander off marked paths or cross violent streams, and check with the rangers to find a trail you can handle.

The city slicker made arrangements with the U. S. Forest Service, which manages the Angeles, to hike the Grizzly Flat Trail in the 170,000-acre Tujunga District. He was lucky enough to get a couple of rangers to accompany him. Forest rangers have changed a lot in the last few years. Margie Behm is called a “forestry technician.” She helps manage all the trails, campgrounds and recreational areas in the district. Wendy Kelly is a seasonal ranger, working full time only part of the year.

To spot forest fires, rangers used to work in small cabins built on towers high above the forest. That was before planes made their function obsolete and pollution made long-range visibility almost zero. The last of the tree-house ranger stations was closed a year ago. Today, rangers work in prefab cabins that come complete with computers and indoor plumbing.

Behm and Kelly drove the visitor through the forest and up the mountain in a four-wheel-drive forest service vehicle. Unfortunately, a lot of the people who venture into the mountains aren’t nature lovers. The majority of them drive only as high as Vogel Flat, which has an elevation of about 1,500 feet and on weekends often looks like the floor of the stock exchange.

The snow line begins at 5,000 feet. The litter line starts at 1,500 feet.

“People trash the forest,” Behm said. “It can be a shambles, especially after a holiday weekend in the summer. There’s a lot of vandalism. For some reason, people like to carve on tables, hack up trees, steal signs, rip up bathrooms and spray paint on everything. They get away with it, too. We usually don’t catch anybody.”

Above the trash line, it’s unusual to see an empty beer can. Behm attributes the pristine condition to vandals’ apparent inability to carry spray cans up the steep terrain. Also, most visitors are drawn to Vogel Flat by meandering Big Tujunga Creek, which is a great place to wade when it isn’t dry and to fish when it’s stocked with trout. If you’re not a hiker, a camper or a hunter, there is little reason to trek higher in the forest.

The rangers also have a problem with the street people of the forest. Behm said there are a few mountain men who live almost year-round in the Angeles Forest, but there also are others who show up at the campsites and refuse to leave, despite the 14-day limit imposed by the forest service.

“You know if they intend to stay,” Behm said. “They bring their couches and plants with them.”

The forest service vehicle drove up past the litter line, past Big Tujunga Dam, and into the wilderness. As far as the eye can see, there’s only nature. No billboards or telephone poles, neon or concrete. You’re where the mountain tops reach out and pull the clouds down around them like veils, where deer, bears, bobcats and bighorn sheep find refuge from man. Most of the time, that is.

The citizens-band radio suddenly comes alive in the car. “Some guy in a red pickup just shot a deer and took off . . . left it there on the road.” Behm and Kelly look at each other and shake their heads.

Grizzly Flat Trail is at 3,000 feet. Most hikers do it the hard way--they climb up, which usually takes about three hours. The rangers were able to start at the top and walk down by shuttling cars, leaving one at the bottom and having another ranger drop them off at the trail head, which is two miles of narrow unpaved road off Crest Highway and difficult to find.

The long and winding trail was built originally by fire teams and maintained over the years by volunteers, mostly youngsters. It descends through a forest thick with Douglas fir and many varieties of oak and maple trees. The forest floor is soft, padded with decaying leaves. Branches form a canopy overhead, but through the tunnel of trees the sun can be seen glancing off the side of a distant mountain.

The rangers seem to take a great deal of pleasure in the things around them. A giant cone from a coulter pine. A live oak that must be 100 years old. An insect habitat on the limb of a tree. A buckwheat bush and a yucca plant. In the distance, a bird screeches and Behm says, “Sounds like a red-tailed hawk.”

After an hour, the trail emerges from the forest to snake along the side of the mountain, affording vistas right out of a Colorado tourism brochure. The sound of rushing water draws the visitor’s attention a quarter of a mile across a narrow canyon to a waterfall that disappears into the chaparral. He stands in the sunlight at the edge of the trail. Two hundred feet down, a coyote darts into the brush.

At the end of the trail, the forest service has set up a small wooden box. Inside is a register and a pen. The visitor signs his name. Only 23 others had hiked the Grizzly since the middle of September. Congestion is not a problem.

It is only a mile across the flats to the car, but the walk isn’t uneventful. With mountains rising up around them, the rangers take the visitor across rock bridges fording Big Tujunga Creek through scenery that looks transplanted from a John Ford western. They also pass a plantation where pine saplings are nurtured. Sometimes, Behm said, the little trees can be planted one day and swiped the next.

“But there are people,” she said, “who’ll come into the forest and water the little trees, keep them alive. There are people who care, and they should. It’s their forest.”