I can't get too worked up about the San Gabriels, one way or the other -- that area used to be fairly nice as recently as the 1960s (I was there!), but in the last 30-plus years it has been destroyed by overuse and abuse. There are now literally 20 million folks who live within easy driving distance -- trash and graffiti are everywhere.
A few years ago, after a rainy winter, we took a hike to a waterfall off the Angeles Crest HIghway -- when we got to the falls, there was a large group of large party people with an enormous boom-box blasting "music" throughout the canyon. We watched them throw a few celebratory beer bottles onto the rocks at the base of the falls. We turned around and went home, following a trail of discarded diapers back to the parking lot. This is no exaggeration, I am sorry to say.
You can call it a national forest or a monument, but it is what it is.
