Sharing the Mountains

On an August evening nearly 30 years ago, Cliff McLean invited his girlfriend to go on a hike in the San Gabriel Mountains. "She said she was tired, she didn't want to go," he recalls. "I said, 'Let's just go, you'll feel better if you get out.'"

On the trail where they had often hiked, he proposed. Gabi McLean couldn't see the ring in the darkness, but she said yes anyway.

The San Gabriels are not only where the McLeans got engaged, but also where they met. Interested in getting into hiking after moving to L.A. as an adult, Gabi says the mountains initially looked brown and uninviting. She found out about a docent-guided walk that met Sunday mornings and began attending every week.

"Whereas before everything was kind of sad-looking to me and dry, I discovered there was really life and have been liking the mountains ever since," she says.

Cliff separately began joining the walks. He met Gabi for the first time in the parking lot of the Eaton Canyon Nature Center and, a quarter-century of marriage later, the two sometimes lead the walks themselves as active members of the California Native Plant Society, San Gabriel Mountains Chapter.

Now retired, they devote at least half of their time to environmental issues. Dedicated to the mountains they both love, they volunteer with the society and at the Nature Center to help preserve the area and to spread their appreciation of the outdoors to others in the Los Angeles community.

They have noticed more visitors to the mountains, with hundreds of people nearly clogging the trails in the Eaton Canyon Natural Area at the base of the mountains. These visitors—women jogging with their dogs, teenagers roaming with their friends, even families pushing strollers—can make the wide dirt trails almost resemble city sidewalks. But besides instilling trail etiquette and care for natural resources in these visitors, the people already visiting the mountains are not the ones the McLeans are primarily hoping to reach.

"The people that come here, they're already interested in nature. That's why they come here," Gabi says. "But that's one of the things we're discussing—how do we reach the people to whom nature isn't anything important."

The area has been in the news in recent years with the establishment of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument by former President Barack Obama in 2014. When President Donald Trump later called for a review of the country's national monuments, the new monument—though ultimately unaffected—again came to the public's attention as a valuable natural area.

The mountains supply 70 percent of L.A. residents' open space, as well as 30 percent of their drinking water. The area also hosts native animals and plants, historic structures and sites, and business and recreational activities, among other uses.

The purpose of the designation was to permanently protect and preserve the area, but different groups are divided on the importance of the monument. Naomi Fraga, the director of conservation programs at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont, has visited the mountains regularly for both work and recreation for nearly 20 years. She's only noticed a couple of new monument signs. Still, she hopes that the new status brings in more funding and increased appreciation from residents. "The public then might re-engage with that area in a way where they didn't necessarily recognize that their backyard was special, and now that there's a national monument there, they're like, 'Wow, well what is there to do?'" she says.

Despite overall skepticism of the monument, groups and individuals who spend time in the mountains tend to agree on the area's overall importance—if not their role within it.

The U.S. Forest Service, which oversees the monument, recently released a new monument management plan as required by the proclamation that established the monument. In keeping with the agency's mission of balancing multiple uses of natural areas, the plan seeks to guide resource management and uses within the monument.

It can be difficult to balance competing interests. "No matter how good of a decision we make, it'll disappoint someone," says Jamahl Butler, the acting district ranger for the Los Angeles Gateway Ranger District, which manages the forest area bordering the national monument. He adds that the public often has strong opinions on Forest Service actions. "It all makes perfect sense until it's your job to figure out how you're going to manage millions of users every day with a shrinking budget in a part of the country where there's a year-round fire season," he says.

Each user group has individual responsibilities and diverse priorities. These range from botany enthusiasts attempting to preserve native plants, to beekeepers using non-native bees to maintain the city's food supply, to camp hosts and mountain rescue teams coping with increasingly underprepared hikers—and many more besides. The groups are ultimately balanced by the Forest Service, which uses its jurisdiction over the area to try to help city-dwellers share and enjoy the natural resource, even as it faces its own limitations caused by lack of funding and staff.

For Gabi and Cliff McLean, who is currently president of the local California Native Plant Society chapter, invasive plants are a significant issue. California has over 1,500 non-native plant species, around 215 of which can cause harm to the environment. More than half of these plants were brought to the state deliberately as ornamental plants, food, or for other purposes, and they can continue to spread to the mountains from urban gardens. Invasive plants can threaten the biodiversity of natural habitats and lead to increased risk of fire and erosion.

The CNPS San Gabriel Mountains Chapter activities include a focus on conservation and native plant gardening, as well as on removing invasive plants. Gabi says they have taken part in some weed removal projects, but that they have encountered issues in the past working with the Forest Service due to bureaucratic restrictions. It can also be difficult, she says, to train volunteers so that they don't uproot the wrong plants.

Forest Service botanist Katie VinZant worked in the Angeles National Forest in the San Gabriels for nearly 10 years before recently transferring to Arizona. "I think there's a lot of things that everyone at the Forest Service wishes they could do, but it's very stipulated by funding, by the amount of personnel, by time," she says.

She says that the Forest Service employed four botanists in the area in 2010; now, it's down to one. "It's not just, 'Oh I don't want to work with CNPS,' it's definitely not the case," she says. "It's just I can never find time."

Despite their challenges working directly together, both organizations pursue many similar goals related to conserving the native landscape.

"Native plants are important to [residents] whether or not they know it," says Fraga, who is also a member of the McLeans' CNPS chapter. "[Native plants] provide them with clean air, clean water, and beautiful scenery and places to get out and enjoy nature, and to be able to connect with a place that is more authentically California than our urban environment."

Although Fraga grew up near the San Gabriel foothills in West Covina, she says she never went hiking or knew of the region's diverse plants. She began volunteering at the Rancho Santa Anta Botanic Garden while in college, and her interest in plants grew. Her first rare plant survey found Fraga, a novice hiker, crawling under sharp leaves and following her mentor off trail to climb a steep ridge under the blazing sun. That day, she decided to become a botanist. "I thought, OK, I'm either in or I'm out," she says. "I decided I was in and that I would hike up the steepest mountain to find whatever plant I needed to find."

Fraga has now been working at the botanic garden for 17 years, where she focuses on conserving native and rare plants and eradicating invasive plant species. She collaborates with the Forest Service and manages a crew of nine people from the garden who remove invasive plants in the mountains.

Invasive plants' lack of natural predators in the area allows many of them to spread beyond possibility of containment. "There are certain invasive species that have just really taken hold that we're never going to be able to remove," says Fraga. "We really focus on those species [where] we know we can identify populations that we feel like we can actually treat and have some impact, and eradicate and let the native plants rebound."

While Fraga has worked frequently alongside the Forest Service for over a decade, she says she's unsure of their top priorities in the area. "I know what they put funding towards, which is mostly invasive species management. And that's important," she says. But she says she would like to see more of a focus on rare plants, and a commitment from the agency towards protecting natural resources beyond legal mandates.

"I personally don't think I would work for a multiple-use agency," she says, referring to the Forest Service's obligation to consider multiple interests. "I would find it difficult thinking about how you might have to compromise on certain aspects of conservation for the sake of different uses."

The native versus non-native debate, as well as dissatisfaction with the Forest Service's pursuit of its multiple-use directive, is echoed by another group: beekeepers.

Both Bill Lewis, of Bill's Bees, and Erika WainDecker and her husband Klaus Koepfli, of Klausesbees, keep honey bees in the San Gabriel Mountains.

WainDecker had known Koepfli for only a couple of months when he first took her to see his honey bee hives. She recalls a harrowing ride up Brown Mountain, ending with bees zipping through the air at their destination. After suiting up, she says, "I walk into the middle, and I just stand there, and they're flying all around me. And I go, 'Wow, this is spectacular.'"

She is defensive of honey bees, which were brought to the U.S. 400 years ago and have since sparked debate regarding their effect on native bees. "What are you talking about when you talk about 'natives'?" WainDecker says. "What era are we talking about? Are we talking about [the] Jurassic, are we talking about the 1950s, are we talking about the '70s, are we talking about the '90s?"

Around half of bee researchers contend that competition between native and honey bees exist, whereas half argue that it doesn't, says Stephen Buchmann, an adjunct scientist in the entomology department at the University of Arizona.

Buchmann is firmly on the competition side. "I consider [honey bees] sort of invasive aliens," he says. "They can pollinate Mediterranean plants, [and] a lot of our worst invasive weeds are Mediterranean in origin. So honey bees foraging and pollinating on roadside weeds can actually help spread weeds."

Still, he says, honey bees have an important place. "Honey bees and native bees are responsible for every third bite of the food we eat, so globally around 35 percent of our food comes from bees," he says. "We'd basically be eating white bread and rice if we didn't have bees."

"Honey bees are a key part of that, but we shouldn't forget nature's redundancy," he adds. "It's like the stock market, you should have a mixed portfolio."

Lewis, a commercial beekeeper since 1991 and a former president of the California State Beekeeper's Association, believes from research and observations that honey and native bees largely complement each other. He emphasizes honey bees' vital role in agriculture. "I think we need to make a special place for our honey bees even if it means making a little more competition for our native bees," he says.

But Lewis adds that the Forest Service's limiting the number of mountain sites available to beekeepers makes it difficult for them to keep their bees within reach of a supply of pesticide-free flowers year-round.

"Gaining access to public lands is probably one of the biggest issues that beekeepers in the state of California face," he says.

He says that the limitations are partly because of the controversy around native bees, but that they are also to ensure that the public doesn't get too near the hives.

Even if he finds a suitable flat spot for his hives, he says, if "it's right next to a fire road, and if you have bicyclists, mountain bikers using those roads or just hikers, sometimes there's problems with having the bees that close to people." He adds, "The Forest Service doesn't want you there if they think there's going to be any issues with the bees and people."

Klausesbees has also had some issues acquiring permits for public lands. WainDecker says that they applied for a permit for a site controlled by the Forest Service, but have yet to receive the paperwork 10 years later. On the whole, they've avoided the issue by keeping their bees on sites that Koepfli gained access to when he began keeping bees in the 1960s, or by using private lands.

Beehives owned by Klausesbees sit surrounded by a fence on a piece of mountain property overlooking La Cañada. Dave and Gwyn Sivertsen own the property and welcome the bees and their honey. Avid hikers, they also own one of around 80 historical cabins in Big Santa Anita Canyon about 10 miles to the east.

Dave bought the cabin while a graduate student at Caltech, and he and Gwyn hike the 3 miles up to it at least once a month—sometimes even several times a week. The cabin holds a special significance to them in its nostalgia, and Gwyn said that while they've discussed moving to Arizona or other areas with mountains they've always wanted to hike, their cabin is the anchor keeping them in La Cañada.

The area's cabins are served by the Adams' Pack Station, the last station of its kind in the nation.

"There are plenty of forest areas that might have 20 cabins, and they don't have Deb, they don't have a pack station," says Dave, referring to Deb Burgess, the station's owner. "She's sort of the central gathering point for us."

Besides helping to connect the cabin owners, Dave says the pack station also offers other services that make it essential to the area, such as regular security checks on the cabins. He says someone will go through the canyon and "check all the cabins to make sure a bear hasn't knocked down the door, it hasn't been vandalized. And if something's wrong they'll either try to do a good fix on it, or they'll tell Deb and she'll notify the cabin owners."

Goats and donkeys occupy a paddock across from a small building that sells food, supplies, and parking permits. Each Friday, Deb Burgess leads a string of donkeys from the pack station up a narrow, steep trail to Sturtevant Camp, which was established in 1893 and now offers campers rental cabins on the weekends. Burgess delivers campers' gear as well as propane tanks and other supplies to the camp.

Burgess owned one of the individual cabins when she decided to buy the pack station in 2006. She worked in information technology and also became an attorney, but says she wanted a change. "The funny thing is, I knew nothing about donkeys, and I knew nothing about packing, and so it was quite an adventure," she says.

Burgess has also managed Sturtevant Camp since 2015, when her nonprofit Friends of the San Gabriels purchased the historic camp and transferred operations to the nonprofit Sturtevant Conservancy.

"The camp and the pack station are the original definition of a symbiotic relationship. They both are entirely dependent upon each other," says Gary Keene, one of the volunteer hosts at Sturtevant Camp.

Keene has been visiting and hosting at the camp since he was a graduate student homesick for the green trees of Michigan. Now 62, he's attached to the camp and to sharing the experience and the history of the area.

"The infrastructure of the camp, of course, is deteriorating over time, and we do our best to keep it up, but the place itself is effectively the same as it has always been ever since Americans, you know, Anglo culture, first ventured up there in the 1880s," he says. He notes that everyone has arrived at the camp in the same way since its founding, walking past the same natural features. "Nobody gets here without putting one foot in front of the other," he adds.

Keene echoed Burgess' observation that Forest Service presence has declined in the area over the years, and that the agency's decisions often irk camp volunteers and cabin owners. "The continuing frustration from our perspective is, 99 percent of the time people making decisions that affect the camp are people who've never been there, or who were maybe there 20, 30 years ago and aren't necessarily in touch with what it's really like now," Keene says.

He adds that the agency's decisions have affected everything from campers' use of a small zip line to applying new standards to the camp's water supply.

The camp resolved the water supply issue when a change of staffing within the Forest Service gave them a new Forest Service employee to work with. "All that shifts with who's in the role," Keene says.

The zip line—and other similar issues—may be harder to fix. Keene says the Forest Service won't allow the camp to operate it without an inspector's approval. "We know that whoever this person is for our area is very likely overloaded, overworked, would be very hard to get on the schedule, and no guarantee that they can hike the 4 miles up to the camp. So the likelihood that they will ever, ever come in and verify that is next to zero," he says. "And we're stuck not being able to use this."

Beyond Forest Service restrictions, another issue is visitors themselves. Burgess says the number of visitors to the area has increased since the 2009 Station Fire left the canyon as one of the few areas open to hikers. While the increase initially helped her business, Burgess says it has since flattened out. "One of the challenges is that people will park down the road, they'll go for their hike, go back to their car—they don't know I'm here," she says. "I've got to figure out what to do about it."

She also says that she's seen a change in people's behavior in the mountains over the last 20 years. Many visitors treat the area like an "urban park," she says. "It's no longer, you know, you're out in the middle of the forest and you need to be prepared. It's, 'OK, where are the restrooms, where are the trash receptacles.' People come unprepared, they don't have water with them."

With limited Forest Service presence and more unprepared hikers, Burgess says she often fields hiker distress calls.

"When somebody's in distress, they usually contact us, and then we call Forest Service dispatch," she says. "They'll call search and rescue, they'll call County, they'll call everybody that needs to come up to be able to handle whatever it is that's going on."

The Sierra Madre Search and Rescue Team covers Chantry Flat, where the pack station is located. It is one of seven volunteer rescue teams affiliated with Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department stations along the base of the mountains, extending the department's directive to find missing persons into the wilderness. The teams often work together to respond to calls in the mountains.

Like Burgess, mountain rescue teams have been noticing more people visiting the mountains—and more hikers needing rescue.

"All the rescue teams, our numbers are all up. Just about every year everyone is reaching a new limit" on rescues, says Dan Paige, a deputy sheriff and the coordinator for the Altadena Mountain Rescue Team. "Some of the teams have been in existence since the '40s and '50s and this is our busiest year ever."

The team receives about 100 calls a year, but as Paige points out, the rescues are concentrated in an area of the mountains only 3 to 4 miles wide. Adding in the Sierra Madre and Montrose teams, he estimates they receive about 400 calls annually.

He attributes the rise to the low cost of hiking and to social media. "Some of the social media is kind of driving it with these just amazing views and spectacular waterfalls and relatively easy accessibility," he explains.

Paige says that many hikers enter the mountains unprepared, with too little water and an over-reliance on technology. "A lot of the popular trails take you, you know, 90 percent of your hike is in a cell phone dead zone," he says. "So a lot of people are using mapping software on their phone, and it's not real reliable."

"There's hundreds of miles of trails in just a little 4-mile-wide section above Altadena in the San Gabriels," Paige adds. "Unfortunately accidents are going to happen if you don't have some common sense and some nature training."

Eric Hurd, a volunteer with the team for two decades, recalls a rescue in which several team members hiked a mile and a half with a litter to carry out a golden retriever suffering from heat exhaustion. "While we were on our way up there we run into another couple that has a smaller dog. That dog's also having heat distress," he says. They ended up carrying both dogs out, until one of the dog's owners also began showing signs of heat exhaustion. The scene, Hurd says, illustrates people's lack of preparation—not only for themselves, but also for their animals.

A recent Sunday found Hurd and teammate Zach McFarland on the team's weekly patrol. The pair drove a sheriff's car to several nearby trailheads, answering hikers' questions and checking the condition of dirt roads.

Since joining the team, McFarland says he's come to realize that while many Los Angeles residents enjoy the mountains, many who visit are unprepared. With "L.A. County being so close to the wilderness, it lets people go out there who wouldn't normally be attracted to things like that," he explains. "Because it's so accessible and so close to them, they'll go out and do hikes or stuff like that without thinking what's really required in knowing the area or taking essentials."

McFarland, who has volunteered for the team for six years, says the work—which involves dropping everything at a moment's notice to head into the mountains in response to a call—can put a strain on his personal life. "You can have a lot going on at home, but you still have an obligation to help other people," he says. "Sometimes it's hard to balance those two."

For McFarland, who grew up in Altadena, volunteering for the rescue team is a way to give back to his community. His full-time job as a police officer in Alhambra—which he pursued after joining the rescue team—also allows him to serve the community, but he says that he particularly enjoys being out in nature. "If I could do this full-time, it would be the best job ever," he says.