Gone With the Sand : Environment: Hikers who abhor disfiguring of nature scour mountain cliffs near the Maricopa Highway. They wipe out love messages.

Markings of a lost generation of scribblers were blown off the rocks along the Maricopa Highway by a group of backpackers spurred only by their sharp disdain for graffiti and the promise of cold beer.

Like ridge-runners of the Old West, a dozen members of Los Santa Dores hiking club last weekend scoured the rocky cliffs along a five-mile stretch of Sespe Creek near Ojai.

The half-cowboy, half-environmentalist mix of friends from Santa Paula were armed not with six-guns but a sandblasting machine.

Hundreds of painted-on epitaphs and love messages from the past melted away under pressure from a truckload of sand, and members of the loose-knit group sweated in 90-degree heat.

One message, scrawled on a sheer cliff about 100 feet above the river, had for years proclaimed the undying mutual love of an author and his girlfriend.

But group members, who regard any disfiguring of nature as an eyesore, blasted it off.

“It’s really satisfying to watch the letters disappear,” said Tim Gibson after the daylong attack on the rocks that have been a target for the defiant, the angry and the lovelorn traveling California 33 for decades.

“A bunch of climbers actually cheered when we showed up,” Gibson said.

Los Santa Dores, an outdoorsy group of men and women who attended Santa Paula High School during the 1970s, toiled next to one of the least traveled routes in the state.

An occasional car honked its horn at the crew or a biker would give a thumbs up.

“People were saying, ‘Hey, way to go, Caltrans,’ ” said Louie Hengehold, tugging at a bright orange safety vest.

But the group only had a permit from Caltrans to do the job.

“We’re just plain folk,” Hengehold said.

Among the inscriptions to become dust was a large red “Mom and Dad” that carried the date 1956 in smaller letters below it.

Another prominent sign said “LSD, Oxnard get high.”

“We’ll probably get a few artists mad at us,” Hengehold said. “But the mountains are for the mountains, not art.”

Also blasted were a collection of expletives, gang monikers and peace symbols.

At the end of the day, Gibson, Hengehold and the others shook the sand from their clothes and joined their families at the Pine Mountain Inn, located farther up the highway in the scrubby wilderness of the Los Padres National Forest.

“Many bottles (of beer) were emptied,” said group member Eric Richards.

The day’s work, the party afterward and the good intentions have been a trademark of Los Santa Dores.

When it’s not clearing trails or picking up garbage in the backcountry of Ventura County, the diverse group goes horseback riding or camping.

Members of Los Santa Dores share a reverence for the scenic wilderness near their homes.

“It’s a gift, and you have to take care of it,” Molly Jackson said. “We’ve been entrusted with some really neat areas.”

Members of Los Santa Dores think of themselves as a nonpolitical group, but their name is a parody of a riding club of wealthy landowners, including former President Ronald Reagan.

Los Rancheros Visitadores of Santa Barbara are “kind of our alter ego,” Richards said.

A proposal that would permit a dam on the Sespe that club members fear would submerge a portion of the land near the Maricopa Highway, has most of the Santa Dores worried, he said.

“I’d like to see the whole thing (the Sespe) protected,” Richards said.

Regardless of what politicians do, Richards said, the group will continue its volunteer work.

Last year, the Santa Dores scaled mountains behind Santa Paula near California 150, where they erased graffiti from some precarious locations.

Brant Jackson, who is looked upon by many as the leader of the group, recalled being suspended in midair with a portable compressor, cleaning off the rocks.

“It’s basically stayed pretty clean since then,” he said.