Another Warm, Lazy Day. What to do? Hey, Look Up There. The Mountaintops Are White. And Close. Just Beckoning Us to . . . : Make a Snow Run

We are in search of the perfect Southern California snow experience.

We don’t mean schussing down a slope in form-fitting Gore-tex or winging by snowy mountains at 110 m.p.h. on a brand-new V-twin Ducati motorcycle.

No, we’re talking about a one-day stand with the white stuff, all out and reckless--a brief, frivolous encounter that everybody knows is going nowhere.

We’re talking about rolling in it for a few hours, then going home.

As the sun bakes the valley below, the tops of the San Gabriel Mountains remain swathed in white from snow accumulations two weeks ago of more than three feet. Thousands of people, in caravans of pickups and cars, are heading up the highways, seeking an introduction to tingly cold.

“You can tell the ones who haven’t seen snow before,” says Mike Hansen, who manages the U.S. Forest Service visitor’s center at Crystal Lake, 35 miles north of Azusa. “As soon as they get out of the car, they jump in, even if they’re wearing T-shirts and shorts.”

They dive into it, shovel it onto the tops of their cars or into the backs of their trucks, roll into its depths. Then they look for slippery slopes, the steeper the better.

Valentino Hanks, 19, his brother Chris Hanks, 12, and Kevin Gordon, 15, all of them from South Gate, have scouted the terrain.

There are some mild slopes near the parking lot, where some families from the Philippines are taking photographs in front of a little snowman. But off to the left there, past some towering ponderosa pine, the young men have found a more challenging route. A narrow chute drops away like a playground slide, coming to a sudden, crunching stop near some rocks 30 feet below.

John Seales, Forest Service maintenance supervisor at Crystal Lake, makes a face when asked about Kevin and Chris’ little discovery. “I don’t like that slope,” he says. “It gets real steep real quick.”

The slope is the source of most of the area’s snow injuries, including two recent broken legs, says Forest Service volunteer Paul Young. “People try to stop themselves by sticking out their leg.”

Chris and Kevin venture down, plummeting on boogie boards, swerving precariously into a little clearing at the end. Then they climb back up. They offer their boards to Valentino’s wife, Alexandra, who is on her first-ever encounter with the snow.

She kneels in the snow, looks doubtfully at the rocks and the constricted passageway and shakes her head no.

With 32 million visitors a year, the Angeles National Forest is the second-busiest in the country, after Wasatch-Cache National Forest in Utah. Summers are busy, but the greatest enticement to urban visitors is snow, says Denise Raines, public affairs officer for the forest.

Snow days are when Forest Service and California Highway Patrol officers expect the thickest traffic on California 39, leading to Crystal Lake, or on Mt. Baldy Road, the winding route to the slopes above Mt. Baldy Village, or on the Angeles Crest Highway.

A couple of days after Mother Nature dumped a blinding, whipped-cream topping two weeks ago on Mt. Baldy, so many people headed up the mountain that the CHP had to close down Mt. Baldy Road to make sure emergency vehicles could get through. The 10,064-foot peak stands at the eastern end of the San Gabriels.

The current supply of snow is melting fast, but Forest Service workers say it should last through this weekend, particularly on north-facing slopes.

There’s something about a suddenly transformed landscape, with snow caked on every horizontal surface, that brings out the antic in people, Forest Service people say. On a clear day, Mt. Baldy, flashing its broad, snowy wall as far away as Orange County, is a beacon to snow lovers from all around.

“It’s the kids who are the driving force in all this,” Seales says. “They’re just ecstatic, getting soaking wet, frozen, then going back for more.”

But maybe it has something to do with being able say goodby to the snow whenever you want, Alexandra Hanks says.

“I think it would be hard to live with,” she says. “My uncle is from Boston, and he told me you have to dig yourself out the front door sometimes and you fall down 20 times just walking a block.”

The 19-year-old student manicurist has listened to the advice of her uncle. “I’m wearing three pairs of pants, three tops, two pairs of gloves and two pairs of socks.”

Let Midwesterners grumble about shoveling out driveways. Let New Yorkers and Bostonians suck on cough drops after a trek home from the office. When you get tired of the snow in these terrains, you just ride down the mountain to the 80-degree weather below.

The Angeles Crest Highway is crowded with sightseeing motorists catching glimpses of snowy peaks or newly green valleys. Motorcyclists, streaks of bright red or green, dart in and out of the traffic like hummingbirds in an orchard.

When you have a brand-new beauty, all shiny fiberglass and murmuring power, this is where you bring it. On weekend mornings, hundreds of motorcyclists congregate at Newcomb’s Ranch Inn, 27 miles up the highway from the Foothill Freeway (210) and then blast back down the road.

“Everybody up here probably rides a little over their head,” says Phil Heylek, 30, a merchandise coordinator for an automotive accessories company, who rides a Ninja. “I mean, you’re sitting on a $5,000 bike that can go 140 m.p.h.”

Perry Gilbert, an Ontario hydraulic technician, is sitting at the counter of the little restaurant, resplendent in a white-and-red calfskin cycling suit. On the stool beside him rests his helmet, its face shield streaked and scuffed.

He is waiting for a friend with a truck to help him haul his reconditioned Yamaha out of a ditch. “I was coming up on a car when the driver put his brakes on,” Perry explains. “I pulled out, but another car was coming, so I had to go into the ditch.”

He lifts his head to show his neck, where a bush scraped him. “Thank God, I was wearing my safety equipment,” he says.

In the winter, the Angeles Crest can be inhospitable for bikers. The road tends to get wet and dirty, making accelerated turns more hazardous than usual. On the other hand, it also means they can’t get to the tunnels 15 miles farther up, where bikers like to run flat-out up to 125 m.p.h. while companions guard the openings, signaling when the CHP appears.

Above 6,000 feet, the air turns nippy, and the patches of white along the side of the highway become full-fledged snowdrifts. The road is suddenly crawling with skiers looking for a close-to-home alternative to Big Bear. On this day, Mt. Waterman is closed because of wind, but the Kratka Ridge Ski Area is booming.

Ski board enthusiasts in bright fluorescent colors sashay easily down the beginners’ slope, next to the highway, but some experienced skiers grumble about long waits at the ski lifts.

“The lines are real long up at the intermediate and expert runs,” says Joey Benedict, a construction foreman from Camarillo, as he packs his gear after an abbreviated session.

His wife, Michelle, a software consultant, shakes her head in dissatisfaction. “It’s real hard and crusty up near the top,” she says.

Agustin Palomino, a native of Colima, Mexico, has found a more fanciful use for the snow. Palomino has pulled his pickup truck into a turnout, and he, his wife, his son and his sister are lobbing armfuls of snow into the back.

Palomino, a construction worker with powerful-looking shoulders, climbs over the wall next to the highway to find boulderlike clots of the stuff. He hauls them back to the truck, laying them down delicately so they don’t shatter.

“We come every year,” says sister his sister, Leticia Palomino. “But usually we bring my father. This year he’s sick after a stomach operation. We told him we were coming, and he said, ‘Bring back a souvenir.’ ”

Drive through Mt. Baldy Village, edging up through a series of radical switchbacks, and you can hear the roar as soon as you pull into the parking lot at the Manker Flats picnic ground.

This is it. Here’s where urban grit meets snowy wilderness. On the far side of a dry stream bed is a succession of long, straight slopes, including the mother of all butt-skiing gradients, stretching uninterrupted up the side of the mountain for a quarter of a mile.

By midmorning, the slopes are an anthill of frolickers careening down the mountain.

Here is Dan Surowiec, a furniture maker from Upland, hitting the Big One on his back. He climbs 150 yards up the slope, surveys the scene below and releases. At first, it’s a smooth slide, down a chute that has been smoothed with use. Then, as Surowiec picks up speed, he hits a patch of moguls, which shake him like a rag doll.

Finally, heading into the stretch, there’s a sudden change of direction as his path swerves around a big bump in the snow. Surowiec is going so fast by now that he’s flung into the air, landing on his side. He narrowly misses another slider before coming to a stop in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the hill.

Is he all right? Surowiec grins. “You get cookin’ real fast up there,” he says.

The skiers at the Mt. Baldy Ski Area, just above, can have their nifty outfits and their poles and sleek K2s. This is the place for serious amateurs.

On this day, the sliding equipment includes boogie boards, plastic garbage bags, inner tubes, cardboard boxes, U.S. Postal Service mail bins, trash can lids, a kitty litter box, beanbag chairs, a baby’s Bathinette and--as Mt. San Antonio College student Steve Stage of Upland puts it--the “old-fashioned way,” the backside of jeans.

Monrovia mechanic Carlos Villalpando tries the long slope, which is steeper than 45 degrees, on his belly on a board. Halfway down he loses the board, coming to an explosive finish at the bottom. He rolls over, brushes the snow off his hair and shoulders and pulls a perfectly formed snowball out of his jacket pocket.

Lesette Pate, a Los Angeles secretary, has never seen snow before, but this is her element. “It’s so nice,” she says. “Next year, I’m going to rent a cabin and have my first Christmas in the snow.”

Pate is tireless. Again and again she picks her way up the long slope and recklessly skims along the slippery surface to the bottom on a snow tube. She tries to entice her daughter, Lakeysha Johnson, 9, along, but the girl is more cautious, taking short rides near the bottom.

There’s a sheer looniness to the scene--with bodies rocketing past, inner tubes flying, the sun beating down--that enchants Pate.

“I love it!” she shouts, after landing on her hands and knees. Then, with a loud laugh, she scrambles back up the mountain.