Gripping Moment

A couple of years ago, back-country enthusiast Jeff Blum came up with an impossibly wacky idea: Get tens of thousands of people to link hands in a human chain spanning the Santa Monica Mountains.

It would be a zany 1970s-style symbolic gesture, a five-minute handshake commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

More important, it would also spotlight these underappreciated mountains, spread the word about the “little Yosemite” right here in Los Angeles’ backyard, he thought.

Impossible? On Sunday, Blum hopes to pull it off. If all goes as planned, some 20,000 people--perhaps many thousands more--will join hands at 10 a.m., forming a chain along Mulholland Highway from Leo Carrillo State Beach through the mountains into Los Angeles.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event,” said Blum, the event chairman and Thousand Oaks resident who launched the annual Calabasas Pumpkin Festival six years ago. He heads his own marketing company and also serves as director of the Santa Monica Mountains Fund, which raises money for projects in the recreation area.

For 18 months Blum’s group and others, including National Park Service officials, have plunged into the logistics of plotting Hands Across the Parklands, sort of a mini-version of the 1986 national event Hands Across America that drew some 5 million participants.

They mapped a 60-mile route along Mulholland, little more than a dirt road in places. They sought sponsors to help cover the estimated $200,000 cost of the event. They appealed for people to form the chain. They searched for about 400 buses to haul hand-holders to spots along the route, and even calculated the need for outdoor toilets spaced a quarter-mile apart.

Then El Nino tossed them a curveball. Heavy rains washed out portions of Mulholland, forcing Blum to improvise. Now the plan calls for the chain to wind 32 miles along Mulholland from the ocean to Topanga Canyon. From there, a relay team of runners, bicyclists, equestrians and wheelchair riders are to fill in the broken links in the 29-mile section to Griffith Park. Others will add their hands in a more symbolic fashion with handprints on banners strung along the way.

Even a 32-mile chain of folks pressing the flesh sounds daunting. Calculating 1,156 people per mile, Blum expects they’ll need about 37,000 bodies to complete it. So far, they have about 20,000. But that doesn’t count the people he expects will just show up.

“We’ll have a chain, whether we have 2,000 or 500,000,” Blum said. “If it’s not complete, it will still be a successful event. We’ll raise awareness and have a great party.”

Participants can simply “gather a bunch of friends and pop on out” for the free event, Blum said.

Through Friday, they can reserve a spot in the chain by calling the National Park Service, which will provide information about five staging areas near the route where parking is available. From these areas--Leo Carrillo State Park, Malibu Creek State Park, Paramount Ranch, Peter Strauss Ranch and Calabasas High School--people will either take a bus or walk to the chain.

Whole groups are also signing up for bigger chunks in the chain--schools, scout troops, outdoor groups, businesses, local cities and governmental agencies.

The event kicks off at 7 a.m. when the relay--or “treelay,” as Blum calls it--begins at Griffith Park with relay participants passing a sappling, a coastal oak, off to one another along the way. Ultimately, it will be planted at Malibu Creek State Park.

Those in the human chain will turn on their portable radios and grasp hands at 10 a.m. Two radio stations, KNX-AM (1070) and KLIT-FM (92.7), are expected to broadcast the event live, marking the moment by playing a song from Barbra Streisand’s new album. (Last week Blum was still negotiating for the right to use the song.)

Called “At the Same Time,” the song is about “people joining in a celebration of life--not waiting for a tragedy” to bring them together, he said.

For Blum, the song is perfect for the occasion. “When was the last time Los Angeles had something to celebrate,” he said. “A lot of things have gone on that have been negative. This is positive.”

After the song, the human chain will disperse, but the festivities won’t be over. For the rest of the day, special events are planned at the staging areas, or “discovery sites,” which include a number of parks, such as Leo Carrillo State Park on the coast, Rancho Sierra Vista in Newbury Park, Paramount Ranch in Agoura, to name a few.

Docents will lead hikes, and other goings-on include Chumash cultural activities, art exhibits, entertainment and mountain biking demonstrations. Souvenir hunters can buy T-shirts, water bottles, maps, books commemorating the event.

The idea is to wake up people to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, Blum said. This patchwork of parkland was established as a recreation preserve by Congress in 1978, but in Blum’s view millions of people cruise the Ventura Freeway without giving thought to what’s out there in the mountains.

“They don’t know what we have,” he said.

In fact, the area doesn’t get the traffic expected, considering its proximity to Los Angeles County’s 13 million residents, says Jean Bray, National Park Service spokeswoman.

“The National Park Service is thrilled the Santa Monica Mountains Fund has created this event to honor the 20th anniversary of the recreation area,” she said.

In fact, the event has drawn the support of city officials from Los Angeles to Thousand Oaks. About 3,000 people are expected to line the route as it snakes through Calabasas, according to City Councilman Dennis Washburn, who is helping to coordinate the event.

He called the patchwork of parkland that makes up the recreation area “a string of pearls.”

“People go all the way to Yosemite to look at a waterfall,” he said. “I can show you 10 in Topanga State Park.”

BE THERE

Hands Across the Parklands is scheduled to happen Sunday along Mulholland Highway and Mulholland Drive from Leo Carrillo State Beach near the Ventura-Los Angeles county lines to Hollywood. Participants will link hands at 10 a.m.

Reservations are not required for this free event, but if you want information and would like to reserve a spot along the route, call the National Park Service, (818) 597-1036, ext. 231. Several staging areas along the route have been designated as spots to park and take a bus or walk to the chain. There are parking fees at some of the parks serving as staging areas.

For more information, call the Hands Across the Parklands hotline, (818) 906-6688. Or visit the Web site at https://www.hand2hand.com. For merchandise information, call (800) 547-6323.