Hiking Guide

    I love to hike, and I know the Applegate trails well, but I don’t like the organizing or the responsibility of leading hikes. Nonetheless, I said I would lead one on the Middle Fork Trail for the Applegate Trails Association because, as a member of the board, I thought I should take my turn and because the trail is beautiful and not difficult and because I know it well. I thought it would be easy.


    To my dismay, forty people signed up. Too much responsibility! Bloody knees from falls on the trail. Twisted ankles from slipping off rocks at the river crossing. Lost hikers. I wanted to back out. I wanted to cancel the hike. I wanted to never lead an ATA hike again.

    By the day of the hike, though, people had dropped out, and only twenty met me at the Applegate Store. An unknown number more would meet us at the trailhead. I slightly undermined my credibility as leader by making a wrong turn on the way there, but as smoothly as Siri I immediately adjusted and told the driver to take the next left. The four drivers behind me followed trustingly, because, after all, I was the leader. They didn’t need to know I had taken a roundabout route to the trailhead.

    The group meeting us there had grown tired of waiting and taken off on their own. Good: fewer people to be responsible for. Two had returned to the trailhead to hike with me because the other leader was too fast. Good: my triumph. The group size was looking manageable. The weather was lovely. The trail rose gently along the creek, and Emerald Pool, when we stopped to look at it, was stunningly beautiful, deep green and elfin under its little waterfall. We followed the trail on up the hill through magnificent old trees to the creek crossing. When I asked my hikers if they wanted to stop there or try to reach the top of the trail, they enthusiastically opted to rock-hop across the water and continue.

    The trail grew increasingly steeper, the walking harder, the forest thicker. Viney maples filled the understory with lacy greenery. When I stopped to see if a restless rebelliousness was seething 

through my hikers, two said they would happy enough to go back and waitf for us at the creek. The others said they were game to go to the top. “Define ‘top,’” one woman said with a smile. “How far is it?” they asked. I said, “I think we’re almost there,” which they took as the joke it was meant to be. Spirits rose as the trail rose higher and the exertion got greater.

    In two and a half hours we were at the top. As each hiker stepped off the trail onto the road, I shook his or her hand, adding congratulations for having made it to the top of the Middle Fork Trail, even though, in truth, it wasn’t much of a feat. The trail wasn’t really very difficult, and there was no pay-off at its end – no mountain views, no body of water, no rock outcropping to sit on, just a dusty road through the woods and a sense of accomplishment. Some people sat on the bank, others stood in the shade, to eat their lunches. Spirits were buoyant. When I said I had to be back at the trailhead no later than 3:00, someone said, “Oh, I see. You’ll be cracking the whip on the way down.” When no one groaned and everyone laughed, I felt I had succeeded as a hike leader.

    You know, I just might lead another ATA hike, after all.

(Photos by Pam Sewell, from Favorite Hikes of the Applegate: A Trail Guide with Stories and Histories, by Diana Coogle and Janeen Sathre)