Bike Trek Takes Local Mormons to Utah

Like their forebears in the last century, a group of Valley Mormons will roll into Salt Lake City today on two wheels, coinciding with the sesquicentennial celebration of the Mormon pioneers’ trek from Omaha to Utah.

Rather than handcarts, on which many settlers pushed and pulled their belongings westward, 23 members of the Granada Hills Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be riding racing bikes.

Their arrival is being timed with that of a larger contingent, reenacting by wagon and on foot and horseback the 1847 journey by Mormons from the Missouri River to “the Great Salt Lake.”

Sixteen Valley youths, accompanied by Thomas Muir, Granada Hills Stake president, and six other adults, left Los Angeles on July 14 accompanied by a support caravan of seven vehicles.

Although the group trained weekly for six months, Adam Ravitch, who will be a senior at Granada Hills High in the fall, was amazed at the temperatures (116 degrees in Las Vegas) and distances (125 miles on the longest day) the group encountered.

Michael Fong, 16, also of Granada Hills, was glad to leave behind the hotter weather and the “cursing and swearing” motorists of California and Nevada.

Both the pace and method of travel brought new insights for 17-year-old Lucy Gerschler of Pacoima.

“I don’t notice the view when I travel by car,” said Gerschler, who will remain in Utah to begin studying at Brigham Young University, named for the church president who arrived at Salt Lake 150 years ago today.

“There we were, riding through the canyons, admiring the scenery, thinking and talking with one another . . . probably just like the pioneers.”