FIRE CREWS CLEARING FOREST ROUTES AROUND WRIGHTWOOD DENSELY CLUSTERED TREES A DANGER TO MOUNTAIN DWELLERS.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST - With recent snow reducing the fire danger, Forest Service crews and contractors are at work thinning overgrown pine and fir forest bordering Big Pines Highway.

Their aim is to thin out densely clustered trees over about 950 acres along the highway and near the Mountain High and Ski Sunrise ski areas, clearing an evacuation route for Wrightwood residents and youngsters in summer camps if a big forest fire roars through the area.

``We're thinning out the smaller trees, up to 12 inches diameter, to reduce competition and provide healthy forests,'' Angeles National Forest official Karen Bauman said. ``If a large fire comes through we want to ensure the road remains open.''

The Big Pines Highway work started last year and resumed again this winter. Forest Service officials hope to thin about 200 acres this winter and spring, on top of about 400 thinned last year.

An even larger thinning project is proposed around the mountain community of Wrightwood, and neighboring San Bernardino National Forest plans to burn off this month or next several hundred acres of old brush in a canyon southeast of the community.

The Big Pines Highway thinning was approved in 2004, a year after 91,000 acres in the San Bernardino Mountains burned - destroying nearly 1,000 homes and killing six people - in a conflagration fueled by thousands of dead trees killed by crowding, drought and insects.

Trees killed by low rainfall and bark beetles have shown up around Wrightwood, but only in clusters rather than the tracts of dead trees that spread across the San Bernardino Mountains.

The Big Pines Highway work is removing smaller trees and brush, trimming branches up from the ground, and mulching or burning the trimmings.

The larger proposed project is to thin about 2,500 acres of forest surrounding Wrightwood, most on the mountain ridge south of town. That project still hasn't received final approval.

Officials hope to get the larger project started next winter, but it is dependent on funding and officials don't know what next year's budget will be, Bauman said.

The San Bernardino National Forest effort proposes a controlled burn involving about 450 to 660 acres of brush in Lone Pine Canyon, aimed at reducing the wildfire threat to Wrightwood and the homes in Lytle Canyon to the south.

The Lone Pine Canyon burn will start as the weather allows, officials said. Once started, the burning could last seven to 10 days.

Forest officials also used machinery to chop up brush in the canyon, creating spots where a fire would slow from the reduction in fuel.

``That canyon hasn't burned for a long time,'' San Bernardino National Forest spokeswoman Pam Bierce said.

A Forest Service survey in 2003 said Wrightwood was in less danger than San Bernardino Mountains communities from fire.

Wrightwood buildings generally have composite shingles rather than wood shingles, its weather had not been as dry as in the San Bernardino Mountains and the types of trees around it face a different, less numerous and less aggressive sort of bark beetle than trees in the San Bernardino Mountains, the survey said.

Charles F. Bostwick, [phone]

chuck.bostwick(at)dailynews.com

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3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) The U.S. Forest Service and California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection burn piles in a controlled burn near Big Pines Highway. Here, crew members make sure everything goes smoothly.

(2 -- color) Forestry officials are continuing a project to clear an evacuation route near Big Pines Highway.

(3 -- color) Forest Service officials hope to thin about 200 acres this winter around Big Pines Highway.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer