Another California site makes Fodor’s no-go list for tourists

For the second year in a row, a California destination has made Fodor’s “No List.”

Last year, it was Lake Tahoe that the travel guide publisher said needed a break from tourists. This year it’s the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument.

Fodors said the Southern California monument is overwhelmed with trash and graffiti and should be omitted from travel plans in 2024.

Also on the list, released this month, are Lake Superior; Venice, Italy; Athens, Greece; Ha Long Bay, Vietnam; Mount Fuji, Japan;  Atacama Desert, Chile; Ganges River, India; and Koh Samui, Thailand  — fantastic places with too many visitors and not enough environmental stewardship.

The 346,177-acre national monument — almost all within the Angeles National Forest — was intended to be the “crown to the Valley of Angels,” a living monument of chaparral, oak and conifer trees with picnic, camping and fishing sites, Fodor’s said. Instead, it has become “covered in trash, tagged with graffiti, and (is) posing an increasing threat to nature.”

Even after monument status was bestowed in 2014 by President Barak Obama, the area was left in the hands of the U.S. Forest Service to manage. But that agency, under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, did not get an allotment of dollars for the designation. Instead it relies on corporate donations and volunteer groups to maintain and manage the monument.

Recent publicity highlighted a portion of the monument at the East Fork of the San Gabriel River, which in the summer became inundated with people who left behind diapers, food wrappers and even mattresses. In a recent article in this newspaper, the USFS said it did not have enough money or resources to repair large portions devastated by storms and overuse, resulting in closure of more than 38% of the campgrounds.

This fall, the East Fork area was in much better shape than in the summertime. That’s because the East Fork’s Golden Preservation group recently removed 800 pounds of trash in two hours. To date, they’ve taken out more than 8,000 pounds of trash, the magazine reported.

Last week, an independent, two-person team made up of brothers Luis Peña and Arnold Peña, collected 1,000 empty  beverage cans in just two hours, said Arnold Peña, who lives in Duarte.

“Right now, it is all clean. But in the summer you will see all that trash down on the river,” he said.

The East Fork river glistened in the November sun next to car turnouts on East Fork Road, about 10 miles north of Azusa. Authorities had placed three large trash bins there. But plastic bags, a woman’s sandal and other detritus were strewn on the berm adjacent to the river. Pizza boxes and other food containers were left on top of the empty bins.

Down on the river, there were piles of beer bottles, empty soda bottles, paper cups, Styrofoam containers, clothes and a broken tent canopy frame. Many trees and rocks were tagged with blue, red and black graffiti, including a natural stone outcropping in the middle of the active stream bed.

Mini rock dams created by people who pool the river for swimming remained. These dams can kill the endangered Santa Ana sucker fish that live in the river, according to biologists. Signs posted along the river tell visitors to “Save the Santa Ana sucker fish.”

“It is a bummer to be on that (no go) list. It is not a list any place is aspiring to be on,” said Casey Schreiner, editor of the Modern Hiker online site, television writer, producer and author of “Day Hiking: Los Angeles (2016).” He said the Forest Service’s management practices are not working.