Jacob Rivera drives his hefty Ford F-350 through two stream crossings, in and out of pot holes that could hold the back end of a Prius, and finally tries to shoot up and over a steep, 10-foot, packed pile of dirt. The truck gets stuck on top of the mound, its 48-inch front wheels hanging from the shock absorbers’ heavy coils.
“Looks like I high centered it,” says Rivera, using an off-roader’s term for getting the middle of the truck stuck. Rivera jumps out of the cab, a goofy grin on his face, and heads towards the multi-colored sea of trucks that inhabit the San Gabriel Canyon Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) area every weekend. In a flash, Rivera, a bearded and stocky guy in his early 40s, has disappeared over the closest hill.
His girlfriend, Tania Trembaly, looks exasperated. “This is the same spot where he killed the transmission last week. We were stuck here all day.”
Within minutes Rivera has returned with help, riding in the back of a camouflage-colored truck with no doors. After he hooks a winch to the back of the Ford, Rivera hops in to steer his rig, and the camouflaged truck drives back down into the streambed, trying to pull the Ford off the mound. A small crowd gathers, buzzing with suggestions, predictions, and encouragement--the banter of engaged, but ultimately uninvolved sports fans.
Throughout the day, whether on steep hills, down in the pits of mud, or in the middle of the deep streambed running through the canyon, trucks, dirt bikes, and ATVs will get stuck in tricky situations. And crowds will gather to see people try to escape. The trucks roaring up steep hills and spinning tight circles in slippery mud are not much different from the ones people pay to see at monster truck rallies and watch on ESPN2. Out here in the Angeles National Forest’s scrubby mountain brush, isolated by the steep, rocky canyon walls, people are making their own fun.
The canyon contains hundred of trucks in a narrow, confined space hemmed in by rocks and by a reservoir drivers are not legally allowed to enter. To keep driving around all day they would have to loop around in endless small circles, over terrain they have driven many times before.
So instead, most truck drivers pull up in a circle around the mud pits at the canyon’s center and watch other people make fools of themselves, tearing up their trucks and gumming up their engines with mud. A small group has staked out a high hill overlooking the whole canyon. There they can mock not only those who get stuck in the riverbed or mud pits, but the drivers of inferior trucks with normal-sized tires who dare to think they can make it to the top of the hill. Up here, there are only doorless jeeps with huge tires, gnarled old trucks with custom paint jobs, a conglomeration of vehicles that look made to survive in a post-apocalyptic world with no roads.
“Man, no way that guy gets up here,” cackles one of the group. Others join in the joke, laughing at the new-looking Ford Explorer with standard-manufacturer tires struggling to get up the hill, kicking up clouds of dirt behind him.
It is a refrain repeated throughout the day, directed especially towards the vehicles that look like they just were bought off the lot. The serious off-roaders have nothing but contempt for amateurs who dare enter the canyon in a truck the dealer promised was built for off-roading.
“They come in here with their white SUVs, the sticker still on them, and try and drive them through the river, up the hills, through mud, and then they expect everyone to come to their rescue,” says Rivera disdainfully.
A nearby middle-aged man with a U.S. Marine Corps tattoo chimes in: “We never leave anyone behind, but some of these new guys who do stupid shit, we might leave them stuck in the river until the end of the day before we tow them out.”
There are always more new guys coming, usually driving the same Navigators, Explorers, and Expeditions used to drive kids to soccer practice or to load up at the grocery store. A lot of these SUV-owners are also bringing their kids with them. Two of the groups with the largest increase in off-road interest are girls under 18, and adults between 30 and 50, according to a 2005 U.S Forest Service survey.
These families are everywhere throughout the San Gabriel OHV area. Children ride miniature dirt bikes, play with remote control cars, help dig out the tires of trucks stuck in deep sand, and bounce around in the back seat of trucks driving through the mud pits. No wonder then that off-roading groups are so eager to highlight their activities as “family-friendly.” Browsing web-sites of the many Southern California 4 X 4 clubs, almost every one invariably touts itself as “family-oriented” or for being for “safe and responsible” use.
That is likely because many off-roaders feel like the future of their sport is precarious. When new OHV areas, like the San Gabriel Canyon, are designated, they are usually areas off-roaders have already been coming to for years on their own. In the good old days, off-roaders drove wherever they pleased. But with environmental groups, whose causes are becoming very fashionable with the greater public, threatening lawsuits and keeping their sport under close scrutiny, off-roaders worry about their public image. Some groups even bristle at the name “off-roading” for their sport, because it suggests irresponsible drivers rambling over pristine open terrain, rather than driving on beaten-up dirt roads, which is what most actually do.
Promoting “safe and responsible” use theoretically means avoiding alcohol which is banned in National Forest recreation areas. But in reality, the booze flows freely in every secluded corner of the park. With just a few rangers on patrol, the ban on booze is hardly enforced, especially when anyone can see a marked Forest Service truck coming a mile away.
Despite the lax enforcement of these alcohol rules, some off-roaders still complain of the preaching that comes from some of the more upright members of local OHV organizations that want to keep on good terms with the Forest Service.
“I just want to come here and enjoy my weekend, without always being told what I can’t do,” says Tania, as we try to avoid spilling our vodka-laden cocktails while the truck bounces over the rocky terrain. Tania, a slim, dark-haired woman in her 30s, works department store retail during the week, and sees the canyon as an escape from her daily routine. Jacob, who has been coming for over 20 years, long before he even met Tania, does not want to discuss his day job at all.
“I don’t even think about it out here,” he tells me as we stand looking at the canyon from the high hill where we are parked. “When you get so focused on the trucks, driving hard over the terrain, seeing how your rig holds up, you don’t even have any other kind of thoughts in your head.”
Those like Jacob, who have been coming to the canyon for years, remember the time before the Forest Service got involved, when life was a little freer.
“We could drive all the way down to the reservoir, drive our trucks in it, camp out over night, go wherever we want,” recalls Steve, an off-roader who has come to the canyon every weekend after 20 years. But some others don’t remember the time quite so fondly.
“It was like a wild west show with keggers and bands, trash everywhere, people dying every weekend from doing stupid stuff,” says “Big” Mike Bishop, the president of the Azusa Canyon Off-Roaders Association, which has been heavily involved in working with the Forest Service to keep the canyon clean and protected from environmental damage.
After years of anarchy, the canyon was made into the San Gabriel Canyon OHV area, barred by fences, and an admissions booth, to bring in revenue to pay for upkeep. The side canyons were blocked off with rocks, and the reservoir adjacent to the canyon, which provides drinking water to the San Gabriel Valley, was declared off-limits.
More changes came later, in 1997, when the Forest Service found an endangered fish in the San Gabriel River, the Santa Ana Sucker. A short, brown, scaly fish with an oversized gold and black eye, the Sucker lives in shallow creeks and sucks algae off rocks, not the kind of iconic animal that makes money for wildlife campaigns.
Like in many other off-roading spots in Southern California, animals which few people had heard of or even seen prevent drivers from going everywhere they want to go. To keep as much habitat as possible alive, the Forest Service working with Azusa Canyon group, marked designated river crossings with rocks. Today the tires of many trucks following the path of these river crossings have marked a dusty road that carries trucks from the canyon entrance to the wider expanse where people hang out and drive through the mud. The trip between these two places takes less than 10 minutes. There is nowhere else to go.
So the off-roaders at the canyon have to hope that someone will do something stupid to entertain them. Today, they are in luck. Near sunset, with the mudpits still teeming with trucks, we are driving back from a bathroom break when we see a concentration of trucks around the deepest part of the river, where it widens to form a small reservoir. In the deep water, an old camouflaged Chevy, its windshield emblazoned with “BAD MDR FUKERZ,” is sinking headfirst. Three people are perched on the roof waving their arms for help as if they are in the middle of the ocean trying to hail the Coast Guard, despite the fact that hundreds of people stand on the banks of the river not further than 15 feet away, cheering and laughing and hollering at them.
This is the grand finale of a day filled with elaborate rescues. Five trucks line up in the water, sturdy ropes attaching each one to the other. Only with the combined horsepower of the five trucks is the camouflaged truck able to escape, with the triumphant owner still hanging on to it, waving to the surrounding masses like a rock star.
The San Gabriel Canyon is just one spot, and one kind of off-roading activity that is going on in Southern California. Elsewhere, dedicated enthusiasts use their vehicles to put some distance between themselves and civilization, dedicating themselves to a sport where the destination is not as important as the journey itself. Out in the Panamint Valley with the On the Road 4 Wheelers Jeep Club, San Gabriel OHV seems a world away, a place where the club members would not waste their time.
“I brought my truck up to San Gabriel Canyon one time, saw everyone just drinking beers and watching people drive around in the mud,” says Keith Lyon, a brawny, bearded Jeep club member in his 40s. “I thought: ‘Not worth bringing my Jeep here, not worth coming back.’”
Out here there are no crowds. The Panamint Valley is a flat desert expanse of brush and dry lake beds, miles away from the nearest town, a mining community filled with burnt-down old houses and rusted car graveyards called Trona. It is separated from Death Valley by a high range of steep, rocky mountains that have hundreds of deep cut canyons and ridges streaming through them. Nearby is the abandoned ghost town of Ballarat, where Charles Manson and his followers used to reside.
Unlike at the San Gabriel Canyon OHV, the Jeep is the only vehicle the club members use. There are seven Jeeps with oversized tires and an array of souped-up parts bulging under their square bodies.
Some lack doors to minimize their weight, and most have mechanical winches that can latch on to another Jeep and haul it out of whatever rocky mass it is wedged into. These Jeeps are meant to go anywhere, and climbing up a dry desert stream bed with layered, nearly-vertical walls, it seems they almost can.
The Jeep caravan moves slowly. When it comes across a “waterfall,” a ledge vertical enough it would have a small waterfall if there were any water flowing, each of the seven Jeeps has to find a way to get its front tires up over the rocks and onto higher ground so the powerful front-wheel drive can haul the rest of the jeep over the rocks.
“This one is going to be interesting,” says John Cary as he pilots his red, door-less Jeep onto a particularly steep and nasty waterfall. As the lead car in this run, it his job to test the waterfall to see if it can be driven without other groups members stacking rocks under the Jeeps’ tires for traction.. As his wheels pass over the towering boulder, the Jeep tilts backwards so the front end is shooting up into the sky at an angle uncomfortably close to 90 degrees. The only thing visible through the windshield is blue sky and a few wispy clouds. With the Jeep’s occupants lying on their backs, it feels as if the vehicle is about to be launched into space. The sun beats through the side of the window.
Cary pushes down on the accelerator and adjusts some of the switches on the complicated panel that controls his front wheel and rear wheel drives. The Jeep roars into action, jolting up and down as the back tire spins uselessly against the stream bed’s sand and loose rocks. In the back seat, Cary’s dog Nova sits nonchalantly on the backrest which is now more horizontal than the actual seat. Unimpressed by the loud noises and shifting gravity of the vehicle, Nova has managed to find a hole in the zipper of a backpack she is lying on and is widening it with her nose, sniffing out the sandwiches inside.
The Jeep is quickly surrounded by the other members of the club who begin tossing large rocks under the Jeep’s rear right tire. After a little work stacking these up, Cary once again fires up the Jeep. This time it shoots up over the boulder and up to higher ground. The group cheers as Cary moves up the stream bed a little to park.
Cary is a white-haired, athletic and lean 61-year-old, albeit with the inevitable middle-aged male gut. He teaches high school AP environmental science, but does not leave his teacher’s persona behind when he leaves the classroom.
Gesturing at pointy rock formations, he enthusiastically describes the valley’s geology. “What you have here is an ancient lake, then volcanic basalt flow, and so many other sediments from other ages…. Look at the angles of those rocks! Amazing!”
Cary considers himself an environmentalist but has little patience for groups that he views as extremist, ones he believes promote the idea of preserving nature without allowing the public to use it. He was a Sierra Club member for decades until three years ago when he left because of what he calls their extremism. Still, he believes groups like it have their place.
“You have to have the extremists on both sides to make sure that people are paying attention to the issues,” he says. “Then people who can see both sides of the issue can work out a compromise.”
The issue of having vehicle access in California open space is one that is being fought for out in the Panamint Valley, where environmentalists and OHV groups are clashing over Surprise Canyon, a rare section of desert that has water in it.
Back in the canyon is an abandoned mining community, where buildings still stand, a place once populous enough to have its own newspaper, the Panamint News. Unlike the rest of the valley which is baked dry, there is actually greenery growing from a creek bed that runs from an underground spring.
The old road to the mining town used to run up this way, but in 1984 a tremendous desert storm washed it out and pushed the gravel and dirt down stream, uncovering the flowing springs beneath it. Today there is little left that even resembles a road. In the narrow parts of the canyon, there is nothing but sheer rock walls, running water, and sprawling vegetation that make the canyon difficult to even walk through in places. The only way to drive up is to hammer a stake into the rock walls and use the metal cables of a mechanical winch to lift the bulk of a Jeep up. Cary concedes that taking the Jeeps through this area could possibly be dangerous for local ecology, but he believes that the issue should be studied in a more concrete manner before deciding to keep vehicles out.
“When I talked to Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) biologists, they did not have a clear idea of what vehicle use could do,” said Cary, his voice growing increasingly frustrated. “All their concerns were based on what could happen, not what had actually happened from vehicle use. We want the same things as these groups, to preserve these areas for our children, but we don’t want to have nobody use them just because there is a possibility that there could be some damage.”
Thinking like this rankles Daniel Patterson. A former CBD biologist, Patterson is totally against vehicle use in Surprise Canyon.
“We have shown how the ecology of the stream would be disturbed by vehicle use,” he says. “Vegetation would be flattened, and trees would have to be chain-sawed to make way for the trucks. Animal’s habitats would be destroyed. Is preserving that wildlife more in the public interest, or the desires of a few extreme off-roaders?”
Surprise Canyon has been closed to off-roaders since 2000 when a successful CBD lawsuit closed the area off. But now a group of about 100 property owners who acquired land near the remains of Panamint City are suing to get access to their property, relying on a 19th-century mining law that allows state and county governments to put roads on federal land. They contend that the road should have been reopened after the 1984 storm.
Tony Fiori, a member of the On the Road 4 Wheelers, is one of the property owners. Fiori acknowledges that he bought the property with the hopes that it would help win back road access to Surprise Canyon.
“I had a chance to buy it to help get vehicles back into there, and I hope someday to use it and give everyone a chance to come see the town,” says Fiori.
If the lawsuit ever succeeds, Fiori’s Jeep looks like it would be one of the ones to make it up all the way. It is bulked up, painted blue, and sports decals that make it look like a racing vehicle. Fiori is the first to make it through the day’s toughest spot, a smooth quartzite rock wall that water has shaped into a slippery slide. While the members of the club are discussing how to possibly get up it, some of their children are sliding down it for fun.
When Fiori motors his Jeep up over the first massive boulder before the slide, the Jeep leans way right, and his left front wheel is thrust into the air several feet above the rock. The group tosses rocks under his other tires, then throws a tow line around his front bumper. They pull hard, trying to off-set gravity’s push, but the Jeep remains stuck. Cary drives his vehicle up around another way, backs up to the top of the slide, and sets up his winch. With a little assistance, Fiori is able to muscle the Jeep up over the slide, an impressive climb that is topped several minutes later when Keith Lyon manages to get up it without any help at all.
Lyon’s success is surprising, considering seconds earlier he was struggling to get over the initial boulder that blocked access to the slide. Standing eight feet above at the top of the slide, the other members taunted and laughed: “Deadweight! Come on, get up here!”
In response, Lyon guns the Jeep’s accelerator. His right wheel flies up over the boulder, and pausing only briefly for another burst of acceleration, the Jeep rumbles up over the slide. The group’s response is ecstatic. They cheer Lyon as he jumps out of his vehicle. They slap him on the back and exchange high fives, as if he had just won the World Series with a walk-off home run.
This will end up being the toughest waterfall of the day, but it will not be the one that ends the day’s fun. About an hour later, with the sun no longer shining in the canyon, and the wind starting to pick up, Cary gets the side of his Jeep wedged on an enormous boulder. His rear right tire gets jammed and stuck in place. While Cary tries to accelerate over a ledge he considered so easy he did not have the group stop to look at it, his Jeep’s rear axle keeps spinning and snaps.
The group is well prepared to tow him out of the rocky mess where he is stuck. In minutes they have backed him out and pulled him up to a road above. Because of the difficulty of these roads, the group likes to do runs where there is an easier dirt road they can take back down so they don’t have to take waterfalls in reverse and dare gravity to wreak havoc on the front end of their Jeeps. So Cary is now on a road that will take him back down to the valley’s paved road using just his front wheel drive. One of the members who towed his Jeep into the valley behind a truck or camper will loan Cary his trailer, and they will tow the Jeep back to the campground to work on it. They will not make it to the mine the group was aiming for at the top of the road, but that hardly matters.
