Hiking in Angeles Forest Is No Walk in the Park for Urbanites : Carelessness can be costly in rugged terrain where six people died last year.

Jim Underdown, 34, and his buddy just wanted to take a little hike in the woods.

Back in four hours, no sweat. Try four days.

Underdown and his friend, Kurt Jones, 34, got hopelessly lost, hiking down Mt. Waterman in the Angeles National Forest, north of La Canada Flintridge. They survived on four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a packet of cherry Kool-Aid until a county Sheriff’s Department search and rescue team found them May 23, exhausted, hungry and battered from wading through thickets of chaparral and sleeping on rocky terrain.

They were lucky.

In 1994, six people died in the 693,000-acre forest, which stretches roughly from Saugus to Upland. Angeles also was the site of 17 nonfatal falls, 18 incidents of people stuck on cliffs, seven mountain bike accidents, 76 motorcycle accidents and 44 reports of lost hikers, most of whom turned up alive and well.

The sheriff’s 24-member search and rescue team averages about 90 calls a month, ranging from stranded and lost hikers to cars that have gone over the side of roadways. With summer in full swing, forest workers are bracing for a season of city slickers who mistake the Angeles for Tom Sawyer Island.

“Due to the fact the forest is so close to the city, most of the people from the city are lulled into complacency,” said Capt. John Camphouse of the Crescenta Valley sheriff’s station search and rescue team that found Underdown and Jones. “The unique thing about this forest here is it is very, very rugged terrain. . . . It’s really unforgiving out there.”

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The forest’s proximity to a vast urban area can make the Angeles seem like a walk in the park, experts say. Inexperienced hikers forget that the stunning forest is a rose with thorns--that an inviting canyon of bay laurel is steep and dangerous, that the lush trail takes confusing twists and turns.

Underdown, who is 6 feet tall and usually weighs 196, dropped 10 pounds during his ordeal. He and Jones had hiked more than a dozen times before and knew enough to take a day pack with matches, a pocketknife and a hatchet. But Mother Nature fooled them, distracting them with lovely thickets of Jeffrey pine and cedar, throwing meandering footpaths their way, creating the illusion that the trail’s end was closer than it really was.

“It didn’t seem like that hard of a thing,” said Underdown, of Los Angeles. “We were probably a little too cavalier about getting on and off this [mountain].”

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Underdown said he was not paying enough attention to landmarks along the way--after all, it was just a day’s outing. Next time, he plans to take along a $7 compass and $3 topographical map.

“From now on, I consider it a $10 insurance policy,” he said.

Rangers say hikers often show up in shorts with no water or emergency supplies, and tell no one where they are going.

“People like to think of the forest as their back yard. I don’t think they realize sometimes that their back yard has ticks and rattlesnakes and uneven ground that you can’t hike on in thongs,” said Randi Jorgensen, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service.

Last July, 20-year-old Rick Perez was on a rare tramp through Angeles with friends to go swimming in Santa Anita Canyon. He stepped off the trail to take a shortcut, lost his footing and tumbled 75 feet to his death. Perez, an El Monte resident, was a star baseball player at Upper Iowa University.