RECREATION : Hiking With Vic Is No Walk in the Park : Outdoors: Following Manuel Victoria, 73, through Los Padres National Forest isn’t easy, but it is rewarding.

Mary Ann Corona had taken a day off to hike in the Los Padres National Forest. Nearly four hours into it, the 40-year-old secretary found herself on a rock ledge, not sure whether to continue her descent or seek an easier route. Just then a hand reached up, an offer of assistance from her companion, Manuel Victoria.

“Chivalry isn’t dead after all, even in the wild,” Corona quipped after Victoria helped her down.

Chivalry is indeed alive and well and only one of the many services provided by Victoria, a 73-year-old Fillmore shoemaker who is arguably the oldest trail guide in the area and certainly the cheapest: The Pied Piper of the Los Padres takes people on hikes for free. Along the way, he serves up pertinent observations--and grilled bean burritos for lunch.

“I hike for the pleasure of the people I’m taking and for my own pleasure,” Victoria said. “I don’t enjoy being out by myself. It’s more fun with a lot of people.”

Victoria--everybody calls him Vic--has been hiking the mountainous Los Padres for 55 years, but only in the past 10 has he made a hobby of guiding neophytes into the wilderness. He has taken hundreds, turning some into seasoned hikers, and counts on a hard-core group of about a dozen regulars for overnight weekend excursions or seven-hour day hikes.

“He’s my inspiration,” said Corona, who heard about Victoria from a neighbor in Fillmore and has been hiking with him for three years.

Word-of-mouth has been Victoria’s best advertising, but he also hooks hikers with the ad on the passenger side of his red pickup truck:

HIKE? Call Vic

(805) 524-1232 or 524-2518

A reporter recently spotted the truck in a Ventura parking lot and called Victoria, who suggested a 4:30 a.m. rendezvous and a hike to White Ledge Falls. The reporter begged off until 8, when they met in a dirt parking lot on Highway 150, a few miles east of Ojai. Corona was with Victoria in the red pickup. The reporter got in the truck bed, and Victoria drove a half-mile to the trail head, which was in the woods at the end of a bumpy dirt road, just inside the national forest.

Victoria was wearing a hat, layers of cotton shirts, shorts and hiking boots his wife bought him in a rummage sale. Except for wavy silver hair and wisps of gray in his thin mustache, he could pass for a young man, his lean torso and muscular legs proving the virtues of a lifetime of vigorous exercise.

Victoria doesn’t believe in short hikes of an hour or two; he regards those as nothing more than nature strolls for people with walkers. No, his hikes consume most of the day. And sometimes most of the night--he usually leaves at midnight to reach his destination before the sun heats up the Los Padres.

Despite his endurance-sapping hikes, Victoria introduces many seniors to hiking, walking with them at their pace. He also takes more women than men. “Women have more guts than men when it comes to hiking,” Victoria said, explaining that women also seem to have “more appreciation” for nature than their male counterparts.

Although the hike to White Ledge Falls would last seven hours round-trip, Victoria looked like he was ready to climb the Andes. His customized backpack weighed about 15 pounds and contained provisions, cooking utensils, clothing, temperature gauge, waterproof matches, camera and an extra pair of sunglasses. An Eagle Scout as a boy growing up in Ventura County, he learned early to be prepared. He even gives his hikers souvenirs: handmade hollow-cane walking sticks that can be used as a whistle, in case they get lost in the woods (which has happened a number of times).

Early in the hike to the falls, the trail was interrupted three times by boulder-strewn Sisar Creek, which is engorged by winter rain and gushing with white water (“I love the roar of the water,” Victoria said). Boulder-hopping the crossings can be perilous, but Victoria put on a pair of high rubber boots and sloshed across the creek, hiding the boots in the brush after the last crossing.

The trail to White Ledge Falls ascended on a fire road that provided a close-up view of towering Topatopa Bluff. Behind the hikers, mist-filled canyons stretched toward the gleaming Pacific Ocean. “What a beautiful morning,” Victoria said just before he heard a squawking bird. “It’s a hawk,” he said, searching the sky in vain. Then he saw a dark-crowned bird peeking out from a tree branch and knew he had been conned. “That’s a Steller’s jay,” he said. “They mimic the sound of a hawk.”

The hikers continued the arduous uphill trek. Victoria pointed out bay trees (“I love that smell,” he said) and edible berries and greens. He made the reporter chew on the leaves of a gray gummy plant that tasted like cough syrup and allegedly can be used to brew tea. By a mountain pool, Victoria knelt and took a gulp, saying he’s been “drinking wild water for 55 years” without any ill effects.

The fire road branched off to a trail that led into wooded Sisar Canyon, where White Ledge Falls was thundering about a mile away. By the time the hikers reached the falls, they had been hiking about four hours and the reporter was eager to experience the homemade bean burritos he’d been hearing so much about.

After unpacking his backpack, Victoria collected dry twigs and branches. Within minutes, a fire blazed between two rocks and the burritos were resting on a small metal grill that Victoria had brought.

While Victoria prepared lunch, the reporter explored the falls. Although it doesn’t compare with nearby Rose Valley Falls in cathedral-like grandeur, White Ledge Falls is definitely worth the trip. About 40 feet wide and 30 feet high, the main falls is overflowing with water this time of year, making for jet-action turbulence and plenty of photo opportunities. A series of small drops continues for an additional 75 yards beyond the falls, propelling the water into Sisar Creek.

Victoria’s burritos, which he made fresh that morning with beans, cilantro and chopped onion, were as tasty as advertised. Around the campfire, he talked about how he hiked the Los Padres as a boy, a passion that was interrupted by World War II, when he served in the Army in North Africa. Even today, he hikes nowhere but the Los Padres.

“There are no pine trees in the Santa Monica Mountains, not as much water and too many people,” Victoria said.

In his younger days, Victoria would time his hikes and keep track of personal records. “You might say I used to try to kill myself on a hike,” Victoria said. “But I don’t have anything to prove anymore. I just enjoy.”

Victoria hikes about 300 days a year--”Winter doesn’t hold me back”--and plans to continue, paying no attention to old age. “I can’t go as fast as I used to,” he said, “but I still have the endurance.”

And then some. When the hikers returned from White Ledge Falls, the reporter noticed the soles of his boots were hanging by a thread. The next day, the reporter’s legs felt like they were hanging by a thread. Victoria, however, didn’t even have a crick. Two days later, he led 10 hikers back to the falls.