The Lone Lawman on Snowshoes : Police: Crime has dropped in 300-square-mile area of the San Gabriel Mountains since its sole deputy took over.

Like some high-country wilderness guide, Bennie Garnes scans the horizon and senses trouble. The weather, at best an unpredictable animal in these mountains, seems poised to strike.

The blustery night has brought six inches of new snow to the San Gabriel Mountains--a heavy load that makes driving treacherous. Now, the wailing wind and promise of another storm have whipped up fresh concerns in the mind of Los Angeles County’s most isolated deputy sheriff.

Garnes has spent the morning cruising the frozen, white roads in his corner of the Angeles Highway near the town of Wrightwood, looking for tire tracks gone awry, a sure signal of a downed motorist.

For five winters, Garnes has been a lone patrol deputy sheriff whose beat stretches about 300 square miles across northern Los Angeles County, rising to 8,000 feet--higher than many Colorado ski resorts.

His patrol territory extends from the San Bernardino County line west to the Vincent Gap, ranging north and south between California 138 and California 2--a swath of still-wild, often-inhospitable country the size of the San Fernando Valley, a domain dominated by national forest land.

Near the Vincent Gulch Divide, Garnes spies two young hikers as they prepare for a trek toward the old Big Horn gold mine. Garnes doesn’t trust them any more than he does the weather. He swings the black and white, four-wheel-drive sheriff’s cruiser around and questions the men as if he were a suspicious night security guard--demanding their estimated time of departure from the woods.

“Hey, this just isn’t a good day for a winter walk,” he says as the hikers hustle off under cruel, iron-gray skies. “But I can’t stop them from going in there. This is National Forest land, open to the public. My job is to keep an eye on them, make sure they don’t do anything stupid.”

During the summer, Garnes helps patrol a 1,000-square-mile expanse of high desert into the farthest reaches of the Antelope Valley. But come winter--from Thanksgiving to Easter--he becomes a mountain man.

Indeed, he is the only lawman many residents ever see in this terrain populated not only by commuting big-city professionals and daytime skiers, but by stately pinon pines, bald eagles, brown bears and mountain lions.

His job is to create a presence, and since he began as Wrightwood’s resident deputy in 1989, crimes such as drug possession and equipment theft at the nearby Mountain High ski resort have plummeted.

He has also played a key role in rescues of hikers and skiers who became lost in the steep San Gabriel Mountains, 52 miles away from the nearest Los Angeles County sheriff’s station.

Over the years, this patrol has qualified him as the only county sheriff’s deputy with department-issue snow shoes, foul-weather parka and furry Moscow cap. “And I’d bet money,” he says, “that I’m the only local deputy who’s ever entertained a high-speed pursuit with a snowmobile.”

The 44-year-old Garnes, who began his law enforcement career 20 years ago patrolling the streets of South-Central Los Angeles, came to the mountains after the discovery of a 9-year-old boy who had frozen to death under a foot of snow after wandering away from a church outing.

Sheriff’s authorities decided they needed a stronger presence around Wrightwood, which on many winter weekends sees its population of 2,500 increase tenfold with skiers, snowboarders and tumbling tobogganers.

Residents had also complained that deputies summoned during winter storms would show up in their shiny street shoes, ignorant of the area.

So Garnes, who had lived in Wrightwood since the mid-1980s, was assigned there, at first just on weekends. His presence was felt within weeks.

Garnes rescued a 16-year-old avalanche victim trapped under four feet of snow for more than 95 minutes.

He spends his days as a voice of reason for city dwellers who rush to the mountains at the first sight of snow, often ignoring the simplest precautions.

On snowy days, he tickets motorists whose cars slip and slide along mountain roads without chains, searches for lost skiers who decide to forge their own trails. He organizes emergency response efforts for sledders with broken backs, hikers with frostbite.

Several weeks ago, Garnes headed the unsuccessful effort to rescue a woman who drowned after falling through the thin ice of local Jackson Lake.

He calls them flatlanders, the overzealous people who see the snowcapped distant mountains and run toward the hills as if they were on some frenzied gold rush.

The resulting high jinks--some of them deadly--make Garnes shake his head.

“Let’s face it, a lot of people who come up here are knuckleheads,” he says. “In altitude, this place is more like Alberta, Canada, than Los Angeles County. I’ve seen too many people in denim jackets and tennis shoes who have no clue about how fast things can change around here, who have no respect for the terrain, the weather or the wilderness.”

Not Garnes. His time in the San Gabriels has taught him a love and respect for this rugged landscape, where avalanches and rock falls occur almost whimsically, where “Icy Road” signs mean business.

With his thick mustache, Garnes is a walrus of a man, resembling Captain Kangaroo with his soft-spoken ways--a cop who would rather give a warning than a ticket.

The steep San Gabriels, he says, are among the most dangerous mountain ranges in the world. Garnes delivers such statements because he knows the land. He knows the secret fishing holes where you can find 14-inch trout and can show you the inspiration points where a person with decent eyesight can see for 150 miles or more.

But he has also come across a more perverse side of these woods--the pornographic movies shot here, the covert drug dealing, drunk drivers careening home from a day of skiing. He has chased down escapees from the nearby prison fire camp, arrested suspects for the thievery of everything from trucks to snowboards.

Crime has dropped since he has been patrolling this back country. Between 1989 and 1993, ski theft incidents, for example, fell from 302 to 41. He has made 76 felony arrests since 1989 on charges ranging from narcotics crimes to fraud, robbery and burglary.

Locals like what they see.

“He just makes us feel safe up here,” said Charlie Koenig, owner of Charlie’s Market in Wrightwood. “Time was, it took a deputy three hours to get here on a call, if they came at all. But Bennie is here within minutes.”

On the streets of Wrightwood, Garnes is part Andy of Mayberry, part Colombo, part McCloud on horseback, a good old boy who locals say makes the best chocolate chip and walnut cookies in town.

On slow days, and there are many of them, he might stop for a chat with the folks at the U.S. Forest Service station or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory outpost, checking in for a cup of coffee at the Mile High Cafe in nearby Valyermos.

At the Mile High, a former stagecoach stop that once had a brothel out back, talk turns to the time Garnes rousted a 350-pound brown bear that had broken into the place for a late-night bite.

“I used a fire extinguisher to drive him out from under the floorboards,” Garnes said. “Man, did he came roaring out of that hole, all right.”

Animals aren’t the only wildlife around here.

Garnes keeps an eye on such characters as the hitchhiker who travels each weekend from the San Fernando Valley to stand on street corners and wave at passersby.

Then there was the Big Horn mine burglary.

Several gang members were surprised during a trailer break-in there and were being chased by three miners wielding shotguns. By the time Garnes caught up with the chase, the miners had collared three of the thieves but had let one slip away. But on this 9-degree day, Garnes wasn’t worried. He just sat in his cruiser with the heater running, his three suspects handcuffed in the back seat.

Then came a tap on the frosted window. “Are you the guy I’m looking for?” Garnes asked.

“Yeah,” came the reply. “Hurry up, get the cuffs. It’s cold out here.”