Eyes on the Sky : Outdoors: Clean air and sweeping views draw residents to snowy peaks and sunny beaches to enjoy New Year’s Eve day.

David Jina, 17, wore shorts Tuesday and had a surfboard strapped to the roof of his car. Nothing unusual about that--except David and two friends were sledding in the snow on Pine Mountain in the Los Padres National Forest.

“This is all I ever wear,” David said as he grabbed a skim board, a teardrop-shaped wooden board normally used for skimming across wet sand. He climbed about 20 feet up a nearby snow-covered slope and whooshed down.

The Santa Paula High School senior, his brother Tom, 14, and friend Mike Pennock, 14, had planned to spend the day surfing. But after finding the water choppy at Surfer’s Point in Ventura, the trio decided to head for the mountains and try out their surfing equipment on a different kind of wet stuff.

“There were no waves, so we came up here,” said Mike, a St. Bonaventure High School freshman who added that he was thinking of attacking the slope on a body board. “I don’t know how it’ll work out, but it’s worth trying.”

Across Ventura County, rain-swept skies and panoramic views of the snowcapped Topatopa Mountains drew residents out of doors to celebrate New Year’s Eve day at beaches, on snowy mountain peaks and at crowded golf courses.

“It’s nice to be outside on a clear day when you can see the snow on the mountains,” said Willie Shaffer, a Canyon Country resident who joined a group of about a dozen Camarillo and Simi Valley carpenters and hardwood suppliers for a few rounds at Olivas Park Golf Course in Ventura.

Tuesday marked the third New Year’s Eve that the group has gotten together to golf for an informal event that they have dubbed the Annual Holiday Hackers Tournament, Simi Valley carpenter Bill Hirsch said.

Frank and Eva Limb, both 65, stopped near Marina Cove Beach at Ventura Harbor for a brief stroll. The Camarillo couple said they always try to go to the ocean on the increasingly rare days when skies are crystal clear.

“We only stay 15 or 20 minutes or so to watch the surfers,” Eva Limb said, looking across the ocean at the sharply visible Anacapa Islands. “How lucky we are to be here.”

The nearly smog-free skies followed a series of weekend storms that dropped three to five inches of rain on the county and left up to three feet of snow in the backcountry.

The clear weather, including “lots of sunshine and some high clouds,” was expected to continue throughout New Year’s Day, said Terry Schaeffer, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Santa Paula.

“It looks like Chamber of Commerce weather,” Schaeffer said.

The arrival of a storm that had been expected to bring significant rainfall to the county today has been delayed by a “closed low,” a circular weather pattern “similar to a hurricane but much, much weaker,” Schaeffer said.

The revised forecast is for wet weather to return Thursday, when the first of two storms may bring as much rain to the county as the storms last weekend, Schaeffer said.

Another storm is expected to arrive sometime this weekend, he said.

If the storms dust the mountains with more snow, it will just be more ammunition for John Parker, 7, of Thousand Oaks, who visited Pine Mountain with his mother, Peggy Taylor, 36, and her husband, Ken Taylor, also 36.

“Snowball fights!” John yelled when asked what he likes best about the snow. But in an earlier snowball battle, he admitted, Ken Taylor “nailed me in the forehead.”

And more snow probably would be just fine for Dimas Urbina, 56, of Mexico City. Urbina spent much of Tuesday morning frolicking on Pine Mountain with his son Pedro Urbina, 32, of Santa Paula.

“It’s beautiful, it’s fantastic,” said Dimas Urbina, a college professor who said he had never seen so much snow. “In Mexico City, it almost never snows this much.”

The Urbinas, along with Pedro’s two nephews, Sinue, 10, and Caleb, 6, proclaimed Pine Mountain wonderful.

“The only problem is it sinks,” Sinue said, demonstrating how the snow caved in under his feet when he stood on it. “It’s fun, but I keep sinking.”

However, Pedro Urbina’s 7-year-old cousin Anisa wasn’t as enthralled.

“I don’t like it,” Anisa said, frowning at the melting snowdrifts and heading for the family car.

“My feet are freezing.”