Snowy Mountains Beckon L.A.

It was only 10 inches, a mere dusting compared to some winters--there have been years when the drifts would dwarf a grown man. But the snow that blew into the highlands Monday on this week’s storm was enough to liven things up substantially on Mt. Wilson’s slopes.

By midmorning, the sugar pines were drooping with fluffy dollops of white and the road to the Mt. Wilson Observatory needed to be cleared. By afternoon, the first eager cars from “town,” as the mountain’s year-round residents refer to Los Angeles, had begun the pilgrimage that occurs every time the flatland suburbanites glance up from the freeways and see that the San Gabriel Mountains have gone white at 3,000 feet.

“They’re a nuisance,” said Bob Cadman, the 56-year-old observatory superintendent who has spent 12 winters trying to work around the seasonal onslaught of snowball-throwing, double-parking frolickers.

“They stop in the middle of the road and block traffic. They climb fences. They park in front of our gates.”

Still, it was tough not to marvel at the year’s first real snowfall, right here, in the capital of sun and surf. For Southern California, it is not enough to have one kind of winter. Here, like everything that isn’t nailed down, winter must actualize itself.

So on Monday, the beaches had a beach-style winter, with rip-roaring breakers and ominous skies. Further inland, the Orange County cul-de-sacs awoke, fresh and sputtering, to skies scrubbed California blue.

In the San Fernando Valley, it was one of those glorious, Valley winter days where you could stand on Mulholland Drive and look north through brisk, bright air to see the ridge of the Santa Susana Mountains a dozen miles away. At one end of Ventura County, truck drivers cooled their heels in the snow; at the other, lawyers surfed.

And for those who just couldn’t call it winter without a snowball or two, there was Monday at 5,712 feet--a pine-scented panorama straight from an Ansel Adams photograph that, like most things here, was just half an hour or so away by car.

By midday, the road to Mt. Wilson was dotted with carloads of people agape at the sight of snow: immigrants who had never seen it, Easterners who had thought they hated it, shutterbugs who wanted to shoot it and toddlers who tried to eat it.

“We kidnapped the kids from school at 9 o’clock because we wanted somebody to play with,” said Vicki Contreras of Glendora, taking in a breathtaking vista in the Angeles National Forest.

Further uphill, transplanted New Englanders Colt Longcope and Shawn Gavin, both 24, romped in flannel shirts through the calf-high drifts.

The snow, the Hermosa Beach residents reported, was not quite what they had grown up with in Massachusetts and New Hampshire--it wasn’t as granular and it looked vaguely “man-made.”

But it was cold and it was white and it packed real well.

“The first thing we did was make a couple of snowballs and throw ‘em over a cliff at L.A.,” Longcope said.

Meteorologists said the weekend’s storm system, which originated in western Canada and Alaska, would move out of the area by today. But it was expected to be replaced by another storm moving in from the Pacific, and intermittent rain and snow were expected to continue through midweek.

The chance of showers in lower-lying areas was expected to climb to 80% today, tapering off to about 50% Wednesday, said Curtis Brack, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc. The incoming Pacific storm was expected to create breakers up to eight feet at most beaches, and up to 12 feet along some of the west-facing shores, Brack said.

Meanwhile, the National Weather Service issued snow advisories for the mountains of Ventura, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego counties at elevations above 4,000 feet.

The heaviest snow was expected to fall in San Bernardino County and Riverside County mountains.

The stormy weather was welcome news on the Southland’s ski slopes, where resorts reported up to a foot and a half of fresh powder.

Suzi Eslick, director of skier services at Ski Sunrise in Wrightwood, said she found her car buried in snow this morning.

“It was wonderful. It’s what we’ve been waiting for,” Eslick said giddily.

The allure of the slopes, however, was offset at most resorts by the Arctic air. Mammoth Mountain Ski Area checked in at only 14 degrees, and conditions at Bear Mountain were only slightly more amenable.

At Ski Sunrise, only six die-hard skiers made it onto the slopes because the parking lot was deep in snow and the outside temperature hovered near a nippy 20 degrees, Eslick said.

“I’m in four layers of clothing, inside the lodge, and I’m freezing,” she said.

Still, she said, there was nothing quite like the joy of being, even temporarily, snowbound.

“It’s because of days like this that I work here,” she said, “when you’re just surrounded by pine trees and God’s country.”

Times staff writers John Glionna and Martha Willman, photographer Gary Friedman and correspondents Mayrav Saar, Scott Hadly, Marilyn Martinez and Deborah Belgum contributed to this story.

* BREAK IN THE WEATHER

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