CORRIDOR STIRS VISIONS; ACTIVISTS SEE GATEWAY TO MOUNTAIN PARK.

Byline: Teresa Jimenez Daily News Staff Writer

In the Santa Clarita Woodlands, creeping snow berries litter the green hillsides like miniature cotton balls scattered in the wind.

The creeping snow berries can be found in many mountain areas, but in the Woodlands they grow in whole stands of shrub, with wooly leaves and white bulbs that birds pluck away.

But what makes the Woodlands special is its variation. Continue through the area to Rice Canyon and you may see a slope of foothill flowering ash. Then there may be California bay laurels and then Douglas fir. Westward, grassland and a valley oak savannah stretch across.

``The Santa Clarita Woodlands has the richest diversity of plant communities,'' said Rorie Skei with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. ``There are many many different plant communities there, which is probably a function of its climate and other factors. But it's quite unusual.''

Still, though Skei has high praise for the Woodlands, which the conservancy has slowly expanded by buying property in the area, she also has an affection for the conservancy's other vast patchwork of land that reaches from Fillmore to Sierra Madre.

The area, a swath of mountain ranges that circles the San Fernando Valley and keeps going, is known as the Rim of the Valley Corridor.

The corridor outlines a zone where the conservancy plans to buy or manage land for use as a system of parks, open space and trails. The ranges are also considered valuable wildlife corridors.

The zone extends over 450,000 acres, and the conservancy owns or manages about 30,000 of those acres. It is always looking to buy more, Skei said.

The Rim of the Valley Corridor has resurfaced as an important tool as Santa Clarita Valley lawmakers try to keep Elsmere Canyon, south of Newhall, from becoming a dump.

Elsmere and adjacent Whitney Canyon were proposed to be included in the Rim of the Valley Corridor when the conservancy drafted its expansion plan in 1989.

But because of political pressure from county officials, who had already set aside the area as a future landfill, the conservancy board removed the two canyons out of fear that the whole plan would fail to get approval.

Santa Clarita activists have fought the landfill proposal since its inception, but the county last month listed Elsmere in its landfill siting element - a waste planning document required by the state - as a future dump.

Now, a bill introduced by state Assemblyman George Runner, R-Lancaster, has proposed adding Elsmere and Whitney in the Rim of the Valley Corridor. Though the designation will not protect the canyons from becoming landfills, it would allow the conservancy to buy property in those areas if state money were available.

The designation would also call residents' attention to the valuable resource in their back yards.

The corridor has been praised as a natural mountain area that will eventually be accessible from trails within the city of Santa Clarita. Even as it exists now, Santa Clarita Woodlands off Calgrove Boulevard provides a network of trails that take hikers past waterfalls and wildlife.

And local activists already envision camping grounds, recreational areas and more trails within Elsmere. The canyon area abuts the Angeles National Forest.

``Elsmere's dominant plant community is chaparral,'' Skei said. ``There are a lot of sycamores, oaks, waterfalls and great wildlife habitats. Like a lot of the areas in the corridor, there are bobcats, badgers and probably black bears.''

Elsmere may one day fill the role of Wilson Canyon in Sylmar. Wilson Canyon is a ``gateway park,'' providing access to the vast mountain area, Skei said.

``It's an interface between the national forest and the city,'' Skei said.

Residents all over the Los Angeles area have found their own favorite spots within the Rim of the Valley Corridor. The popular getaway offers paths through the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena and nature classes on the growth of walnut trees near Mount Washington.