Lofty Words

At 3,111 feet, the men sprawl across the craggy peak, sunning themselves like lizards on rocks.

After six miles of hiking rough trail amid the brown-sugar-curry scent of the California everlast plant, this Sierra Club group has reached the highest point in the Santa Monicas--Sandstone Peak.

To the southwest stretches the endless Pacific, the tip of Santa Cruz Island hovering over the ocean mist. To the north run the Topatopa Mountains; to the east, soupy brown smog spills out of the bowl of the San Fernando Valley.

Dazzled by the view, one of the men approaches the monument atop the peak and opens a metal drawer, revealing a pen and a log book. He takes them out and begins to compose.

“The Gay and Lesbian Sierra Club: ‘Fabulous,’ ” is the enthusiastic entry of Encino resident and Sierra Club hiking group member Dale Palmer, a management consultant.

With those words, Palmer and his five hiking buddies on a recent Sunday joined a little-known literary society--whose members have scaled the Sandstone Peak of Boney Mountain, found the register books stowed there and written whatever struck their fancy.

For at least 30 years, city folk have been scaling this peak--about five miles south of Thousand Oaks--and waxing poetic about God, nature, drugs, current events or weaning their children off Nintendo.

“This is a way of marking a completion,” said Palmer, who reached the peak via the Mishe Mokwa and Backbone trails. “When you reach a goal, you want to memorialize it some way.”

Added government lawyer Jim Potter of Los Angeles: “There’s something satisfying about knowing that you left your name on top of a peak. The knowledge that your name’s still up there is satisfying. Of course, it’s not up there long. I’m sure it eventually winds up in some bureaucrat’s office.”

Two bureaucrats’ offices, actually. But it is worth a trip to both offices to read what visitors to Sandstone Peak have had to say over the years.

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The first stop is at a nondescript archives office of the National Park Service, one of the federal, state and local government agencies that preserves available land in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, a 150,000-acre patchwork park that stretches from Santa Monica to Point Mugu.

There, museum technician Phil Bedel will lug out a gray cardboard container: CD Box 5, SAMO1016.

Inside, about a dozen registers date back to 1989, the year the park service took possession of 1,700 acres, including Circle X Ranch--a former Boy Scout camp--and nearby Boney Mountain. The park service acquired the land from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency that buys land for resale or donation to the park. The conservancy purchased the property from the Boy Scouts of America for $5.85 million in 1987.

Most of the books aren’t much to look at: scruffy spiral-bound notebooks, others in government-issue green. One is covered in vivid turquoise silk, patterned with dragons and flowers.

Inside, thousands have written about love lost and found, disasters both natural and man-made. And this being Southern California, there are plenty of references to smog, Santa Ana winds and strip malls.

“There should be songs written about hikes like these,” one visitor jotted in an unsigned 1989 entry. “Ain’t it great to see the parts of L.A. that nobody builds on?”

A few days later, someone by the name of Chicago Dog elaborates on that theme: “It’s nice, but I can see too many strip malls!”

Some signers use the available paper to urge a boycott of ivory and pledge their allegiance to particular sports teams and rock bands.

After the 1992 riots, the 1993 Green Meadow fire and the 1994 Northridge earthquake, hikers seemed inexorably drawn to the peak, seeking perspective on events that shattered the calm.

“While L.A. is burning, all is quiet and peaceful here,” wrote Santa Monica resident Raquel Diaz in perfect cursive on May 2, 1992. “Keep the peace.”

No one in the park service or the conservancy is quite sure who started the tradition of leaving registers or guest books atop the peak. The oldest remaining book dates to 1966.

But a note from longtime camp ranger Griff Jones in one of the books from the 1960s alludes to the existence of registers before 1956, the year the Boy Scouts took possession of the land. According to Jones they are too weather-beaten to be legible.

The remaining Boy Scout-era registers are housed at the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy’s headquarters in lush Ramirez Canyon. Those four 5-by-7-inch books are largely filled with list upon list of Scouts who camped at Circle X and hiked to the summit.

The non-Boy Scout visitors of the ‘60s and ‘70s bemoan the paving of Southern California, exalt the use of drugs and grouse about certain politicians.

One anonymous scribe on Feb. 1, 1970, had this to say: “As Ronald ‘The Mouth’ Reagan would say, ‘If you’ve seen one mountain, you’ve seen them all.’ Happiness is a new governor.”

The books themselves seem to materialize from nowhere, said park service Ranger Tom Young, who has patrolled the area around Circle X for a decade. Depending on how prolific hikers are, a register can be filled in three months, or last more than a year. Yet the register box beneath the bronze and cement monument honoring Boy Scout benefactor W. Herbert Allen, an executive of the Title Insurance and Trust Co., is rarely empty.

“It’s somewhat of a mystery to me,” Young said. “We did not maintain the registers ourselves at first. None of us [rangers] would put the books up there, but someone did.”

Now, Young makes a point of checking on the books when he scales the peak. He’ll tuck in a cloth-covered government supply book when one register is filled, and take the filled one away. He does not censor the logs, except to cross out anything that appears to be an advertisement for a business--legal or illegal.

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“I don’t read every page, I just scan it to make sure no one is conducting a business or placing a ‘vote for someone’ sticker in there,” he said. “I do monitor for obscenity. If someone says, ‘I’ll get you drugs, here’s the number for drugs,’ I’ll call that number and let people know that activity isn’t appropriate.”

But most people instinctively know the rules of the book and obey them, Young said.

The registers are part of a long tradition for explorers: conquer something big, then leave your mark. It is the same urge that propels astronauts and mountaineers to plant flags in hard-to-reach places, said Rorie A. Skei, assistant executive director of the conservancy.

“It’s a much more inventive way to leave one’s mark than graffiti,” said Skei, who said she has seen parts of Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Kern and Santa Barbara counties from the peak on a clear day.

“It’s a way of sharing a human experience: ‘I was here. I feel good about this beautiful place, and I’d like to express that.’ ”

FYI

The Sandstone Peak of Boney Mountain is accessible from the National Park Service’s Backbone trail head. The trail is accessible from a parking lot on the north side of Yerba Buena Road North (off Little Sycamore Canyon or Pacific Coast Highway) about a mile northeast of Circle X Ranch. It is a strenuous hike to the peak, which is three miles round trip via the Backbone Trail, or a six-mile round trip using the Mishe Mokwa and Backbone trails. Trail maps are available at the parking lot.