OJAI VALLEY : Local Mormons Re-Enact Trek by Ancestors

Sweat pouring off his brow, 16-year-old Clint Reynolds wedged his thin body behind the wooden handcart’s thick handle Friday and pushed mightily up the mountain’s dirt road, simulating what his Mormon ancestors had done 150 years before on their great trek west.

“It had to have been hard,” said Clint, panting heavily, sun beating down on him, as he pushed the heavily loaded cart up a sharp incline alongside two other teen-agers. “Just going up this hill is hard. And they didn’t have some of the trails that we have.”

Clint and 152 other Mormon teen-agers from the Camarillo, Oxnard and Port Hueneme areas took part in the Mormon Youth Conference Pioneer Trek organized by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The seven-mile hike up Sulphur Mountain Road near Ojai, organizers said, was meant to teach young Mormons about the fierce struggle their ancestral pioneers undertook traveling west across the planes to Salt Lake Valley.

Family and friends were purposefully split up on the hike to promote new friendships, organizers said.

Hikers were placed into groups of about 10, each group adopting the name and history of an actual 1800s Mormon family that had come west. Each of the “families” pushed a large handcart full of survival supplies. Participants came dressed in 1800s garb, trying their best to simulate the rough times of their ancestors, although some modern-day comforts did sneak by, such as a few small electric fans and some beepers.

Standard dress for the day included women in long skirts wearing flower-patterned bonnets--which pioneer women had worn to protect them from the sun. Men donned long pants, vests, cowboy hats and anachronistic tennis shoes.

“Let’s pull our families together here! Let’s stick together,” bellowed Corky Clevenger, 36, as young bodies started to tire.

“We wanted (the teen-agers) to understand the pioneer heritage and get the feel of what their forefathers felt coming across the plains,” Clevenger said as silver and turquoise decorations hanging from his vest jingled. “We hope they can learn that even when things are difficult, if you just hold strong, you can persevere.”

The teen-age hikers seemed well aware of their ancestors’ westward journeys. In seminary classes before the trek, they learned about how the western treks were launched in 1847 after Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon religion, was killed. And about how Brigham Young then led followers away from religious persecution in Nauvoo, Ill., to Salt Lake Valley.

“We should be lucky we didn’t have it as hard as they did,” said Julie Lovstedt, 17, of Oxnard. “They had to cross frozen rivers, they had people dying around them. Our cart died, but we’re still alive.”