On Alpine Roads, a Dangerous Beauty

High in Los Angeles County’s untamed backyard, above the cloud line, Mike Leum has looked down on such scenes again and again: a pile of wreckage on a canyon floor, hundreds of feet below a switchbacking mountain road.

“Too many of them,” said Leum, chief of the sheriff’s search and rescue teams.

The crash that killed three employees of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Wednesday was a reminder of how brutal the beauty of the San Gabriel Mountains can be to city residents who drive through them on their way to work and play.

Two-laners like Angeles Forest Highway, where the JPL carpool van missed a curve and rolled like a boulder into a deep gorge, wind for miles along deadfall chasms. They offer views that rival the Sierra Nevada’s, but leave no margin for error behind the wheel.

The asphalt might be frozen in one spot, rock-strewn in another. Fog can blind the turns any time of day. At night, a bear can rear up in the splash of headlights.

“I’ve done hundreds of rescues in the past 12 years,” said Leum, who was the first rescue team member to reach the van. Hours later, as he stood on the highway’s narrow shoulder he was dirty and tired.

“When you get cold weather up here, you’re going to get icy roads and cars going over the side.”

Traffic through the San Gabriels increased dramatically in the early and mid-1990s, as motorists from the fast-growing Antelope Valley opted for the wilderness route to jobs in the Los Angeles Basin.

California Department of Transportation figures suggest it has since tapered off near the key junction of the Angeles Forest and Angeles Crest highways, from 5,000 one-way trips in 1997 to 4,000 last year.

To avoid the congested Antelope Valley Freeway, commuters drive about 25 miles of Angeles Forest Highway to reach the even steeper and more treacherous Angeles Crest, which takes them the last 10 miles to the flatlands.

The roads were built in the 1930s and ‘40s, and provide access to Angeles National Forest campgrounds, hiking trails and ski slopes. They were never intended for heavy commuting.

The same is true for other busy mountain byways in Southern California, such as the canyon roads through the Santa Monicas and Ortega Highway in the Santa Anas.

“It is the ultimate mix of urban and wild settings,” said Kathy Peterson, a U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman. “The commuters become accustomed to the conditions, but the conditions do change.”

To ease the journey to Los Angeles, Antelope Valley civic leaders have proposed tunneling through the mountains, widening freeways and launching a high-speed rail line.

Angeles Forest Highway, meanwhile, has been nicknamed “the Palmdale 500,” because of speeders from the Antelope Valley city.

“Most of the people who drive it drive it safely,” said Vince Bell, a California Highway Patrol officer. “But people do speed; people tailgate.”

The cause of Wednesday’s crash is under investigation. Seven other people in the van were injured. The van had been en route from the Antelope Valley to the robotic space flight lab in Pasadena.

This year, 12 motorists have been killed on principal San Gabriel Mountain roads, including the JPL workers. Four died on Angeles Forest Highway, five on the Angeles Crest, and three elsewhere. In 2003, nine people were killed in the region.

Motorcyclists who prize the thrilling bends along pine-studded ridges, especially on the Angeles Crest, have accounted for a disproportionate number of fatalities, Bell said. Commuter deaths are rare, he added.

That is little comfort to Jim Lewis, co-owner of the Hidden Springs Cafe on Angeles Forest Highway. He said the road has become lawless.

“There is no law enforcement,” he said. “It’s an open highway.”

About 10 years ago, Lewis said, he was hit by a commuter’s car after crossing the road to help another motorist who had crashed. The car that struck Lewis skidded on ice and knocked him 40 feet over an embankment, he said. “I was in the hospital for 19 days.”

He also recalled a recent accident in which a car hit and killed a 400-pound bear.

Commuters, Lewis said, “don’t respect the mountain.... What I see in the people who drive this highway is fatigue, they’re tired. There’s a lot of stress because of work.”

Palmdale resident Michelle Davis has taken the mountain shortcut to her job in Inglewood, but prefers the freeway.

“It’s really, really scary,” Davis said of Angeles Forest Highway. “It’s clearer than the freeway, but you get more ice up there. And the people who drive that route are accustomed to it, so they drive real fast.”

Last year, Davis’ cousin, Dana Broussard, moved with her husband to Northridge from Palmdale because of the commute. “Too many curves where you can’t see who’s coming the other way,” she said of the mountain highways. “Too dangerous for me.”

Bell said investigators had not determined how fast the JPL van was traveling when it plunged over a dirt berm, about a mile and a half north of Angeles Crest Highway.

“The conditions of the road were pretty bad,” said Leum, as investigators used surveying equipment to map out the crash site. The smashed van was barely visible in its resting place of thick brush.

“It was like the middle of a cloud up here,” he said.

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Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this report.