Making a Run at Saving Ridgelines : Environment: Ed Ayres will compete in a 146-mile foot race from Death Valley to the summit of Mt. Whitney to raise money for a park.

Ed Ayres’ perspective on development in the Santa Clarita Valley is from above.

An ultra-marathoner, the 48-year-old Santa Clarita resident runs for several hours daily along the dusty network of ridges that cut the valley into dozens of smaller pockets. In recent years, Ayres said, he has watched as his favorite views of wide-open chaparral have been flattened and paved over to make way for new homes. Some of his favorite trails have been obliterated by new neighborhoods of tile-roofed tract homes.

“When they decide to develop, they’ll remove whole mountains,” he said. “I was horrified to see this happening. It seemed to me a kind of killing, a kind of crime.”

Today he will compete in one of the world’s most grueling foot races--a 146-mile race from Badwater, 282 feet below sea level in the scorching desert of Death Valley, to the freezing summit of Mt. Whitney, elevation 14,480 feet.

Part of his reason for competing in the race sponsored by a running shoe manufacturer is to raise money to buy land for a “Wildflower Trail Park” in the Santa Clarita Valley, a linear park that would be protected from developers’ bulldozers. Ayres said he has no particular site in mind, but he wants to protect as many of the smaller ridges that separate housing developments from one another as possible.

The ridges act as natural barriers between the smaller canyons and valleys that make up the Santa Clarita Valley, creating a feeling of seclusion that Ayres said will be lost if open spaces are not preserved.

The idea came to him when he says he does his clearest thinking--while running.

On a recent morning run along a ridge near Saugus High School about a mile from his house off Seco Canyon Road, the steady rhythm of Ayres’ breathing was accompanied by the echoing thuds of a hammer, the distant whine of an electric saw and the faint rumblings of earthmoving equipment. An expanse of roofs, tidy lawns and curving streets spread out in the small valleys on either side of the ridge, covering the hillside to within 100 yards or so of where Ayres maneuvered his way among the dry brush.

Almost all of it, he said, has been built in the last three years.

From the ridge, which roughly follows the path of the Los Angeles Aqueduct pipeline, the ordered patchwork of streets and homes and yards stand in sharp contrast to a backdrop of rolling brown hills. The rocky trail follows the steep inclines and descents of the ridge, and brittle bushes whip Ayres’ bare legs as he runs--usually for several hours each morning.

Ayres, who has run for 34 years and is editor of the Los Angeles-based magazine Running Times, said he has collected about 20 pledges ranging from 25 cents to a dollar per mile for his campaign to save the open spaces. He knows that with land prices soaring such puny amounts won’t be enough for his ambitious project, but he hopes to attract the attention of others who will join the fight.

“I’m just interested in seeing if I can help stimulate a few of my fellow citizens into doing something about this devastation at a community level in a community where it’s not too late,” the muscular, dark-haired runner said. “If there are not kindred souls that care about the hills and the environment, then those things are not going to last.”

The impact of development in the Santa Clarita Valley on schools and traffic has been debated tirelessly for years. Those issues concern Ayres, but he said he is not a joiner and finds it hard to imagine himself at endless meetings of planning boards and community groups. But he knows what he sees, and it is not good.

“There is something that happens when people are in close contact with nature that enables them to stay in touch with their most important values,” he said, adding that exercising in such an environment increases mankind’s ability to reason clearly and make wise decisions. “It’s a kind of suicide to destroy the environment from which we evolved.”