Help on the Hoof

As the twilight sky bathed the mountains in brown velvet, Vince Curtis strapped on a radio and mounted his sorrel quarter horse.

He set off slowly into the quiet canyon, scouting the rolling terrain for targets--unruly drunks, kids with matches, daredevil mountain bikers, lost and thirsty city slickers.

A few days each month, Curtis, a mounted volunteer for the National Park Service, and his muscular gelding, J.R. Duster, trot off into the sunset to help protect the national parks and their visitors.

Though the basic chores of a mounted volunteer may seem simple--greeting park guests, making sure dogs stay on their leashes and warning mountain bikers to be courteous to pedestrians on the single-track footpaths--the help Curtis and his troop of volunteers provide to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is crucial, said National Park Ranger Dave Evans.

Over the years, the national park system has acquired more parcels of land, said spokeswoman Catherine Saunders.

But the National Park Service hasn’t found additional funding for more rangers to look after that extra land, she said.

Today, there are 40 rangers watching over the Santa Monica recreation area’s 150,000 acres of mountains, which expand into Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

Only 10 are gun-wielding law-enforcement types.

So the rangers depend heavily on a team of mounted volunteers who serve as the park service’s eyes and ears.

Volunteers spot trouble and act as ambassadors of goodwill for the recreation area.

“We depend on the volunteers to take up the slack,” Evans said. “They’ve picked up on jobs that rangers typically used to do, like working the visitor centers, leading programs and helping us on back-country patrols.”

In addition to spotting fires, directing hikers to good walking paths and telling visitors not to pick flowers, a lot of the volunteers’ work involves serving as public relations liaisons for the park service, said Curtis, a 37-year-old Oak Park home appraiser who became a volunteer about four years ago.

One weeknight at dusk, Curtis was full of cheerful “hellos” to parents and their children hiking in the canyon, while keeping an eye on a pack of after-work bikers who regularly use the mountains to keep in shape.

It’s important that people on bicycles yield to easily spooked horses and vulnerable hikers on the canyon’s single-track paths, Curtis explained.

His eyes also darted to the tree lines, looking for deer and mountain lions.

Right now, the volunteer unit has a team of about 30 horse owners who help out a minimum of eight hours a month.

But more friendly, face-to-face visitor interactions are sorely needed to build up good community feeling for the parks, Curtis said.

He is looking to double his volunteer team to 60 people, so that each of the recreation area’s 30 parks can be staffed by at least two mounted volunteers on any given day, especially on the weekends.

Volunteers must bring their own horses and be experienced riders; a ranger will go out with them the first few times to check out their ability.

Volunteers also receive about 16 hours’ worth of training, in which they learn radio skills, park service philosophies and first aid.

Evans said the park service would probably cover medical bills of volunteers under its workers’ compensation insurance plan if someone were injured.

The volunteers serve in many ways, Curtis said. “The weekends are especially important. That’s when people come who have just bought their bikes from Kmart. [They] come up here and might not know the rules around here. The volunteers sure help out a lot,” he said.

Most of the incidents they handle are minor, such as asking pet owners to put their dogs on leashes or telling bikers not to tail one another too closely.

However, some situations are more serious.

A team of volunteers recently used first aid skills and taped up an injured biker’s shoulder.

And Curtis recalled having to radio a ranger when he discovered some foreign tourists were eating wild mushrooms, which can be poisonous.

Another time, he called a ranger after discovering poachers with big sticks looking under rocks for snakes.

And during the summer, Curtis said, he alerted the ranger station that there was a small fire off Cheseboro Road, very close to a group of children on a mountain bike trip.

Although some situations may get hairy, there is no age limit for the volunteers.

The youngest mounted helper is 14-year-old Jessica Means of Camarillo, who goes out at least once or twice a month with her parents, Ruth and Ron.

“It’s really fun, because I get to ride my pony, Travis, and be outside in the park riding around with my parents,” she said.

Another volunteer, Lorraine Biederman of Thousand Oaks, said she loves to spend time with her friend, Linda Caruso of Santa Paula.

“It’s a nice way to do what you love doing and give back to the community at the same time,” Biederman said.

It’s the perfect job for people who love to ride horses and who also love national parks, Curtis said.

“I do it because I like to work my horses and I also want to make sure our parks are around for a long time,” he said.

“Plus, it’s great to throw on one of these park service shirts and get treated like a ranger for a couple hours every month.”

FYI

For those interested in becoming mounted volunteers, a class for new members will be offered through the park service on Sept. 27. It’s a four-hour class that begins at 9 a.m. Volunteers must own their horses and be ready to learn first aid, cardiopulmonary resuscitation and radio skills. Call park service volunteer coordinator Mike Malone at (818) 597-1036, Ext. 205, for an application, or Vince Curtis at (818) 735-0939 for more information.