The Mountain Man

Mt. Wilson’s real-life legend doesn’t quite fit the description. He’s short and muscular, more likely to have stepped out of the pages of Ring magazine than of the Old Testament.

Poison oak and various accidents have scarred his body. Once, after tumbling off a trail, he had to be flown off the mountain in a helicopter. In January, he suffered a heart attack while digging a rain trough and was told his hiking days were over.

But Ambrose Zaro, age 87, is still very much around Mt. Wilson.

A few days after the recent earthquake, the former boxer-security guard-construction worker was back at his volunteer job of 34 years, keeping the 7 1/2-mile-long trail navigable for hikers, joggers and bicyclists.

“I was going to retire” after the heart attack, he said. “But when I came back and saw what the trail looked like, well. . . .”

It was his second failed retirement.

“In 1983, when I heard that Queen Elizabeth was coming to Sierra Madre (at the base of the trail), and saw what shape the trail was in, I went back to work,” he said.

Her Majesty didn’t take a hike. But if she had, Zaro could have pointed out where he’d moved fallen trees and boulders, cut back brush and carved out new dirt ramps to replace washed-out stretches of the two- to four-foot-wide path.

Zaro has hiked the Mt. Wilson Trail for 73 years--since the day he caught a glimpse of the San Gabriels through binoculars in downtown Los Angeles and immediately decided to cut school. He caught the next Pacific Electric car for Sierra Madre.

It was Zaro and other volunteers who saved the trail after a big fire followed by heavy rains in 1953. In doing so, they preserved a bit of history.

The Mt. Wilson Trail was first cleared in the 1860s by pioneer Benjamin Wilson, the grandfather of Gen. George S. Patton Jr., as part of a logging venture that proved unsuccessful. In 1889, a Harvard University telescope was hauled up the trail, piece by piece, to occupy the first observatory at the top.

The Pedestrian Era

Mt. Wilson (altitude 5,710 feet) was dotted with people in the early years of the century, the golden age of hiking known as the Pedestrian Era. In 1911, 40,000 people serpentined up the trail.

Still popular by today’s standards, the meandering pathway up Little Santa Anita Canyon is also the site of an annual nine-mile up-and-back run. Zaro redesigned the course, of course.

“I had to smooth out a couple of the curves,” he said. “People going up were crashing into people coming down.”

Other mountain-lovers and occasional Boy Scout troops still help him out. But mostly he works alone.

“The ‘Grand Old Man of the Trail’ has almost single-handedly maintained it,” John Robinson writes in his “Trails of the Angeles.”

The U.S. Forest Service, which lacks the funds to maintain the trail as well as it would like, is appreciative. “He has simply made an outstanding contribution to the trail,” said Mike Milosch, a Forest Service officer.

Appreciative Townsfolk

The equally appreciative townsfolk of Sierra Madre have cooked Zaro breakfast some mornings, held testimonials in his honor, named him grand marshal of their Fourth of July parade and even bought him a new pair of boots.

But Zaro thinks that he’s the lucky one. “It makes me feel good to see mothers and children walking the trail,” he said on a recent two-hour workout. “And look how beautiful this (mountain) is. I’ve had a wonderful life.”

Since turning 80, he’s slowed down, he admitted.

“I used to carry 30 pounds or more in my knapsack,” he said. “Now, I just carry some pruning shears, a hammer and a shovel. I haven’t climbed to the top in three years but I plan to make a try in a few months.”

He has cut his visits from four to two per week, mostly confining his work to the first couple of miles of trail to a point known as First Water. He knows every bend.

“See that mound there?,” he asked, pointing to a lump. “I built it. Helps divert rainwater off the trail.”

Half a mile or so further ahead, he said: “See the tubes holding up the sheet metal there? I got those off a Rose Bowl float the city had. Someone asked, ‘Whatever happened to the float,’ and they told him, ‘Zaro’s got it up on the mountain.’ ”

Pointing off to the side, he said: “There are bees up there. We were clearing out a new trail in there one time and they came after us. People must have wondered who that crazy man was running up the mountain slapping at his neck. Later, I sat down to relax and, geez, more came out of my knapsack. After that, we always worked that area in the rain. Bees won’t come out then.”

As if critters and rain and fire and earthquakes don’t give him enough trouble, vandals are a problem.

Invisible Enemies

Zaro referred to his invisible enemies in the singular--” He pushed that sheet metal down the mountain,” ’ ‘He tore down that sign,” “ He bent that rod,”--as Sherlock Holmes would of his arch-foe, Moriarty.

The old mountain man offered no psychological analysis of his tormentor. Like the forces of nature, the vandal just is.

But one aspect of the work gets on his nerves: the 42-mile round-trip drive between his home in Maywood and his mountain.

“All that traffic,” he said. “Usually I need to have a couple of beers afterward to relax my nerves.”