County’s Trail Fees Leading to Confusion : Recreation: Annual passes costing $23 are required as of Jan. 1. Violators will be fined $100 beginning next month. Hundreds have called with inquiries and complaints.

Just days after a new law went into effect requiring a $23 annual fee for anyone using Los Angeles County nature trails, parks officials are scrambling to implement the still-developing permit system while fielding hundreds of inquiries and complaints from concerned or angry hikers and other nature lovers.

“It’s a new program and we’re doing our best to implement it,” said Sheila Ortega, a spokeswoman for the Department of Parks and Recreation, which oversees the trails. “We have some details to iron out and we’re learning as we go.”

Hikers, horseback riders, cyclists and others have swamped park information lines, Ortega said, wanting to know where to buy passes, whether they can buy one-day passes (they can’t) and what penalties they face if they flout the law.

Some decided they’ll take a chance on getting a $100 fine. Others said they’ll just hike elsewhere. “How do they plan to enforce it?” asked Donald Webb, an aerospace engineer from Torrance who was hiking without a pass recently in Placerita Canyon near Santa Clarita. “Put in turnstiles?” He said he’d hike on city, state or federal trails from now on.

Ortega said the county is still fine-tuning the new system. For example, should the county require passes for hikers who start off in a federal park, cross into county land and then go back into federal territory? So far, opinion among county parks officials is split.

The ordinance, which went into effect Jan. 1, says those 16 and older will have to buy yearly passes to use the dirt trails--whether foot, equestrian or bike--that zigzag through the 6,600 acres making up the county’s 19 parks and nature centers, regardless of how often they visit them.

The ordinance covers trails from the eastern reaches of the San Gabriel Valley to Charmlee Park in Malibu to Devil’s Punchbowl in the Antelope Valley. The fee does not apply to state and national parks or city-run concrete bicycle paths.

Parks and recreation officials said that about 850,000 people visited the county parks and nature centers last year, although not all visitors used the trails.

Vic Stratman, trails information coordinator for the Parks and Recreation Department, said safety police--who already monitor county trails in vehicles and on horseback--will ask trail users to show their passes, which may be attached to neon green wrist bands or wrist purses that come with the pass.

A map of county trails is supplied with each permit. Police will issue warnings until Jan. 31, but write $100 tickets after then.

“The spirit of this is not to levy fines, it is so that people who use the trails will pay a fee to keep them open,” Ortega said. She said she hopes the levies will function on an “honor system,” acknowledging that the county does not have enough officers to patrol all trails.

The trail fees, which are expected to raise $150,000 this year, were approved by the Board of Supervisors in September. The fees, along with $3 parking fees instituted in October at county parks on weekends and holidays, are expected to raise about 20% of the $1.2 million needed to maintain the trails and parks each year.

Trail permits are sold at regional parks, nature centers and recreation offices. Eighteen private feed and bike stores--most in the San Gabriel Valley--sell the passes as well. Sales through other stores and agencies are in the works, officials said.

Even parks officials said getting used to the fees will take some time. “We’re kind of confused about the permits ourselves,” said Matt Kouba, natural areas supervisor at Charmlee Park. “We don’t know how they’re going to affect us or the activities here.”

For example, Kouba said, will teen-agers on a school-sponsored field trip have to pay the fee for a one-day visit? He didn’t know the answer.

Frank McDaniel, a volunteer for 13 years at Placerita Canyon Nature Center east of Santa Clarita, said he could not understand why the county is levying fees on trails that are maintained by volunteers such as Boy Scouts and why only yearly passes are available.

“It’s beyond me how they think that people who come with their toddlers to walk in the park for a block or two are going to pay $23 for a whole year,” McDaniel said. “It’s going to scare them away.”

Karen Pearson of the Santa Clarita chapter of the Sierra Club blamed the fee on “bad county government. I have to question whether $80,000 bulletproof cars for county supervisors and millions for office renovations should take priority over our parks,” Pearson said.

Other trail users, however, said paying a fee was worth it. “You have to pay to go to the movies,” said Dale Wolfgam, principal of a private Lutheran high school in Sylmar. “As long as the money is used to actually maintain the trails, I don’t have a problem with it.”

User Fees

About 330 miles of trails throughout Los Angeles County require users to carry $23 annual permits. Trail permits are sold at regional parks, nature centers and recreation offices. Eighteen private feed and bike stores--most in the San Gabriel Valley--also sell the passes. The trails include:

Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park Trail, San Dimas

Schabarum Trail, from Whittier to Rowland Heights

Colby Dalton Trail, Glendora

Altadena Crest Trail, Altadena

La Canada Open Space Trail, La Canada Flintridge

Los Angeles River Trail, from Downey to Long Beach

Devil’s Punchbowl Nature Trail, Antelope Valley

Los Pinetos Trail, Sylmar

Coastal Slope Trail, Malibu

Eaton Canyon Park Trail, Pasadena