Nature Seekers Bring Problems of Urban Life to Angeles Forest

Rich Aranda holds the big .44 Magnum loosely in one hand and swigs deeply from a king-sized can of beer with the other. "See that big rock up there?" he says, gesturing broadly with the gun barrel toward a pockmarked boulder perched on the shoulder of the hill in front of him. "When I got divorced, I used to come up here. That rock was my ex-wife. I put a lot of chips in that thing."

Then, with the beer still cradled in his left hand, Aranda, a used-car dealer from Maywood, zings six quick ones down the line. Like Kirk Douglas mowing down a gang of trail thugs, he barely aims the gun, holding it low, sending up spurts of dirt around an old fire extinguisher that someone has propped up 50 yards away.

This is Pigeon Ridge, one of 14 designated shooting areas in the Angeles National Forest. Like many other spots in the mountainous 1,000-square-mile forest, it is a place of excess.

The gullies are ankle-deep in shell casings and ammunition cartons, trees are shattered from the impact of illegal armor-piercing bullets and dumdums and the air resounds with the thunderclaps of sophisticated weaponry.

"You have freedom here to have a gun, right?" says one of the hundreds of "plinkers" who hike up to Pigeon Ridge every weekend and stand shoulder-to-shoulder, pumping hot lead into the hills. "You have to use it."

Law enforcement agencies and the U.S. Forest Service, which administers the Angeles forest, are gearing up this weekend for the onslaught of summer, when increasing numbers of city dwellers shuck their inhibitions and do their thing in the wild. Authorities are beefing up patrols, clamping down on rule breakers and putting up heavy steel gates at some entry points to head off nighttime rowdiness.

The Angeles, second in popularity among all the national forests to Tonto National Forest in Arizona, has become the prime escape for millions of Los Angeles area residents. "You can think of the Angeles as a giant urban park," said George Roby, the forest's supervisor.

Have the Problems of City Folk

That means that it has become both a place for Southern Californians to engage in their notoriously unrestrained recreational activities and a setting for transported urban customs, including crime, traffic and vandalism. Use of the park has increased about 20% in the last four years, officials said.