Youngsters Take Leap Into Troublesome Waters : Recreation: A popular pastime is jumping from a 40-foot cliff into the Hill Canyon swimming hole. But officials are concerned about the danger.

Wednesday was the first official day of summer and Chris Wolf had already hurled himself off the 40-foot cliff into the Hill Canyon swimming hole half a dozen times.

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But each new cannonball required a fresh dose of courage, the nudge of peer pressure and enough sun on the 15-year-old’s rapidly browning shoulders to make the cool, green waters below irresistible.

Poised on the edge, he peered into the depths, shuffled his feet and urged his friends to watch. Right before he jumped, he spat--a key component of the ritual.

The Thousand Oaks swimming hole is a hidden--and forbidden--treasure for east county teen-agers. They have to trespass to get there, hiking about a mile along the Arroyo Conejo from the north end of Ventu Park Road through city property. A sign warns them to stay out, but it has been sprayed with so much graffiti that it is illegible. Instead of shooing them away, it serves as a fine place to lock up their bikes.

Hill Canyon is a dangerous place and the kids know it. Sitting on the lip of the cliff, they point almost reverentially to an orange cross painted high on the opposite side of the canyon. Whether it is a case of urban folklore or not, the teen-agers believe that the cross marks the spot where Mark Widner, 29, of Newbury Park fell to his death in the summer of 1992.

After Widner slipped off the cliff and hit a rock, it took a helicopter from the sheriff’s search-and-rescue unit to get him out of the narrow canyon.

Even Chris, back on top of the cliff with the aid of a rope, his bravado buoyed by his last jump, shivered a little over the cross.

“You gonna jump again?” he asked his friend Logan O’Ryon.

“Why not?” Logan said with a shrug. “There’s nothing else to do.”

Chris explained the system. No matter how many times you jump, he said, you still get scared or, as he put it, “chicken.” He knows the risks of hitting the rocks below.

Logan glanced back over his shoulder before he jumped.

“You got to look out for each other out here,” he said.

“Yeah, ‘cause we don’t want to carry [somebody] out of here if anything happens,” Chris said.

“It’s safe,” Logan said. “It’s like family.”

Officials tend to disagree.

“It’s spectacular, it’s beautiful, but it’s dangerous,” said Tex Ward, co-administrator of the Conejo Open Space Conservation Authority, which will eventually take over ownership of Hill Canyon from the city. Ownership is particularly fraught with complications, he said.

Both the park district and city officials are aware that youngsters slip down into Hill Canyon on a regular basis during the hot summer months, Ward said, and it worries them. Before Widner’s death, there were two others killed at the swimming hole during the 1980s.

“It’s a dangerous situation,” he said. “But it’s been going for as long as it’s been there, I suppose. And at least as long as I’ve been here.”

It’s not just the rocks that pose a threat, Ward said. The Arroyo Conejo is fed mostly by runoff, and so it could be contaminated. “Anything that comes out of the hills, out of The Oaks [mall] parking lot” could wind up in the swimming hole, he said. “So it’s not pure water.”

One of the major drawbacks of having teen-agers running wild in Hill Canyon is graffiti, Ward said. Taggers have marked up many of the cliff walls and scrawled their names on the sewer lines that run parallel to the creek.

“They don’t respect the beauty of the place,” Ward said.

But the kids using the swimming hole Wednesday were equally disgusted by the graffiti marring their secret place.

“It sucks,” Chris said.

“It’s so stupid,” Logan added.

Hill Canyon is a kid’s dream; besides the swimming hole, there are waterfalls, caves to be explored and, on most days, not an adult in sight. The teen-agers said rangers rarely make their way back to the swimming hole. The only adult supervision they have are the admonitions of their parents.

“My mother called me from work this morning,” Logan said. “She’s all, ‘Don’t go out there again.’ ”

April Sutton, 16, of Simi Valley was the only girl at the swimming hole Wednesday. She watched indulgently as her boyfriend, Cody Rees, 17, flung himself over the side again and again.

“I already did it once,” April said. “But once was enough for me. My butt hurt. You feel like you’re never going to come up. Then you do and you’re so relieved.”

Fifteen-year-old Tony Dematteo emerged from another jump with a bloody elbow, which he displayed to his friends. He noticed April and Cody packing up. They just met Wednesday, but after a few hours at the swimming hole, they have become summer friends.

“You guys out of here?” Tony asked.

“Yeah,” Cody replied. “You going to be here tomorrow?”

They agreed that they will see each other again, at the top of the cliff, right around lunchtime.