SAN GABRIEL VALLEY / COVER STORY : Rough Riders : Long Mountain Bus Trip Puts Students to the Test

When it rains, the creek outside the Lewis house in the forest swells into a rampaging river, with waters too swift and high to cross. So after a punishing storm, Cathy Lewis throws a 30-foot ladder across the creek and helps her four children crawl to the other side.

They have a school bus to catch.

The Lewis children and 19 other students in the Angeles National Forest ride what is arguably the toughest school bus route in the county. It is at least a one-hour trip each way--sometimes nearly two hours--and 52 miles round trip to and from the La Canada schools--on winding mountain roads that turn slick in storms.

Call it the school bus trip from hell.

In ugly weather, such as the recent relentless storms, parents fret about the slick roads and speeding commuters.

“I worry a lot,” Lewis said. “You’ve got a lot of rock slides, and the snow is always dangerous.”

Students from second to 12th grades who ride the bus say the long trip is more boring and inconvenient--and sometimes nauseating--than scary.

These days, they rise before the sun, the temperature outside in the teens. On dark, frigid mornings, they bundle up, trudge to the bus stop and then shed layers of clothes before they get to school, where the sun is often shining.

They don’t get home from their bus ride until 4 p.m., just before darkness falls. They go to one of the best school districts in the area, but seldom can take advantage of extracurricular activities, unless they can beg a ride home, a doubtful proposition in stormy weather.

Sometimes they are pulled early from classes to make the trip back before an expected storm can hit. And during stormy times, Dan Dodge, director of maintenance, operations and transportation for the La Canada Unified School District, must make a daily early-morning decision about whether it’s safe to send the bus up. The students missed four of the first six days of school this month because of the recent storms.

In its 14-year history, the bus has never had an accident or even a close call, district officials said. Students pay no fee to ride the bus, which is funded by the district at a cost of $58,000 a year, a small expense in its $17.4-million operating budget.

The bus has a heater, snow tires, seat belts and chains for its route on Angeles Crest Highway, a hairy drive even in good weather. In 1994, according to the California Highway Patrol, seven people died in traffic accidents on the highway, and 106 people were injured.

Parents say they wouldn’t put their kids through the ride if the district’s schools weren’t so good. La Canada students’ standardized test scores are among the top 2% in the state, and 98% of the district’s high school students go on to college.

But for the students, it’s a dose of daily culture shock.

In the mountains, kids are used to doing without. There are no stores, fast-food restaurants or gas stations for the families of Caltrans workers, ski lift operators, U. S. Forest Service employees and other mountain residents. Some students live so far from the main roads that they face a 30-minute drive with their parents in the morning before they even get to a bus stop.

Then they head for one of the most affluent spots in Southern California.

Younger children love the moment when the snow-topped bus pulls up to school under balmy skies. Heads turn, and they feel like celebrities when their friends applaud with laughter and try to salvage bits of fallen snow for snowballs.

Older kids complain that the bus is geeky.

“You’re the only one coming in on a bus in La Canada,” moaned Kelly Sheehan, 22, who rode the bus from third grade until she graduated in 1990. “Everyone else is coming in on a Mercedes.”

The worst part, said fifth-grader Parrish Hensley, 11, is that she can’t stay after school to play with her friends because she has to catch the bus.

“I always ask my mom, ‘Why can’t we live downtown?’ ”

Last year, Parrish’s brother, 16-year-old Parker Hensley, got up at 4:30 a.m. so his grandmother could drive him to 6 a.m. freshman basketball practice, three days a week. Then he took the bus home. The grueling schedule tired him so much that he would start to nod off in class. This year, he said, he’s taking a break from basketball.

Now that he’s old enough, he sometimes drives himself to school.

“For the past 11 years, I was really looking forward to getting my license and not having to get on the bus every day,” Parker said.

Someday, when Parker has children of his own, he will tell the story of his daily bus ride in the time-honored tradition of suffering parents everywhere.

“If they ever start getting out of line like saying how tough it is,” the 10th-grader said, laughing, “I’ll just keep them in line by telling them that other people had it harder.”

And the hardest part, the youths say, is the morning.

On a recent morning, Cheryl Eul had her hands full, trying to get her three boys off to school: fifth-grader Ian Meyers, 10; fourth-grader Sean Meyers, 9; and third-grader Brenton Meyers, 8. The boys, along with their mother and stepfather, live in a two-bedroom, 800-square-foot house near the Chilao Maintenance Station, 26 miles up Angeles Crest Highway.

The house was cozy, with braided rugs and wreaths on the walls that Eul made from willow twigs, sunflower and yucca shoots she gathers in the forest. She kept the house toasty with a wood-burning stove, although 16 inches of snow covered the ground and a light rain was falling. (Houses in the forest don’t have natural gas.) The boys’ stepfather, a Caltrans supervisor, was already at work, trying to repair rain-damaged roads and keep the highway clear of snow.

At 5:30 a.m., in bare feet, Eul trod softly on the carpet to the boys’ bedroom door and opened it.

“Ian, Sean and Brenton,” she whispered, trying to cushion the shock of the early hour. “Time to wake up, guys.”

“I’m awake, I’m awake,” Ian muttered, and rolled over in his single bed. Next to Ian’s bed, on a top bunk, Brenton sat up immediately, pushed his stuffed dinosaurs aside and started to make his bed. Brenton is always first up.

A few seconds later, Ian swung his feet to the floor, and then on the bottom bunk, Sean rose, rubbing his eyes, last to get up as usual. On his slow days, his mother resorts to tickling to get him out of bed.

Even when you’re awake, Sean had said earlier, “you’re so tired you can’t stand up.”

After the boys made their beds, Eul washed their hair in the bathroom sink, and combed through a little gel. Breakfast was orange juice, eggs and wheat toast.

At 6:45 a.m., Eul sent them off to the bus with sack lunches and a kiss; she won’t see them again until 4 p.m.

Some of the boys’ classmates make fun of them, dubbing them “mountain kids,” Sean said.

“Sometimes they say, ‘Sean, you live in the dumbest place in the world.’ ”

Day after day, the routine is the same, and Eul worries until her boys are safely home, especially about speeding commuters who ignore the warning signs that say “icy.”

“It’s not so much the bus driver, but the other people--they’ll just try to run you off the road,” she said.

In pre-dawn darkness, the bus starts its climb up the mountain, rising 5,600 feet, past a junction called Upper Ladybug, with its three tricky “S” curves, and another called Windy Gap, with its gusty canyons.

The bus makes four stops in the forest, starting about 6:30 a.m. at the Chilao campground, just a few miles from the ski slopes. Then, it winds to stops at Barley Flats and Redbox, and then to the last pickup at the Chilao ranger station. At about 7:35 a.m., the bus drops off the older students at La Canada High School, which includes grades seven through 12. Ten minutes later, the younger children get off at Paradise Canyon Elementary School.

If Angeles Crest Highway is closed because of treacherous conditions, the bus sometimes takes the long way down the mountain, on Upper Big Tujunga Road, a grueling, two-hour ride each way.

Come winter, the parents turn into weather junkies. Adrian Hensley, mother of Parker, Parrish and another daughter, monitors the weather on an electronic machine that keeps track of barometer readings, temperature and wind speed. By 5 a.m., she has usually called Dodge, the transportation director, at his home in La Canada, where clear skies tell nothing about what’s brewing up at the 5,600-foot elevation level.

The children just want to know whether they have to go to school or not--and whether they’re taking the usual long way down or the extra long way down.

On the bus, the older students pile in the back, the younger ones in front. In hot weather, the ride is stifling; the best moments are when the bus passes a mini-waterfall or an occasional bear. In winter, some of them get tired of looking at the snow. Some complain of headaches from the altitude change. Others get motion sickness and throw up into one of the always-available bags on board.

On a recent morning ride, 14-year-old Samuel Villalobos, who wore a cardinal USC hat, dozed off, his face half-buried in a mountain parka that he had buttoned up to his neck. Juliette Viertel, 13, put on headphones and listened to Boyz II Men on a portable cassette player. Megan Sheehan, 12, used a thick brown eye pencil on 13-year-old Missy Lewis, who doesn’t have time to put on makeup in the morning.

“It’s boring,” said seventh-grader Brandon Lewis, 12, staring out the window. “Just sit here in solitude and isolation.”

But there is an upside.

“One of the good things,” Brandon said, “is we don’t get detention because we can’t stay late.”

To pass the time, they play games like “slug-a-bug”--any time someone sees a Volkswagen, they call out the color of the car and get to sock someone. “Little blue bug,” Sean Meyers called out, just before the bus pulled into the elementary school, but he wasn’t sitting next to anyone close enough to hit. Or students who wear pants sit in the back seat and play “wishbone,” spreading their legs in a “V” shape so motorists can see their feet. Then, they get to make a wish.

On the way back, by 4 p.m., bus driver Jesus Munoz was ready to make his last stop to drop off Parrish Hensley and her sister, Alison, 13.

Alison can’t wait to get off.

“I could drive this road blind,” she groaned. “I’ve memorized it.”

At Alison’s request, Munoz stopped at a fork in the road, where residents have mailboxes on posts. Alison scurried out to get the mail.

A couple miles from their house, Parrish spotted their German shepherd, Bear, running after the bus in the snow.

“C’mon, Bear!” she hollered out the window.

Bear followed. Their mother wasn’t at the bus stop as usual for the five-minute drive home. The two girls told the bus driver they’d walk the three-tenths of a mile home.

Munoz let them out and watched the girls and the dog make their way home.

“I don’t feel comfortable with this,” he muttered.

So he put the bus back into gear, picked them up and took them to their driveway, where their mother had just pulled up. Then he turned the bus around, satisfied. He would see them again the next day.

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Life on the Road

In the old days, children in Angeles National Forest went to a one-room schoolhouse. If it snowed, there was no bus to cancel. Instead, for physical education class, students hit the ski slopes.

Now, students in the forest take the bus to La Canada schools. Bus service started in 1981, when the district closed the schoolhouse in the forest because of budget cuts and a dwindling student population. (The forest falls within district boundaries.)

It is La Canada’s only school bus route, except for the one that picks up special education students.

In winter months, district administrators wrestle each day with the decision whether to run the bus.

Dan Dodge, the district’s director of maintenance, operations and transportation, sometimes rises as early as 4:30 a.m. to monitor the weather before he makes the decision on the bus run. Dodge, who now lives in La Canada, was a forest resident until 1993.

“My kids rode the bus for eight years, so I’m a little tied up with it,” he said.

Bus driver Jesus Munoz, 34, took over the job in September when the previous driver took a disability leave. Munoz said the forest’s icy roads don’t bother him.

Still, he said warily: “Do you know, on this road, a lot of people die?”