Woman, 75, Takes Hikes All in Stride

It’s 7:40 a.m. on a foggy Sunday. Mountain bikers dressed in Day-Glo plumage are gearing up in the parking lot at Orange County’s Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park in the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains.

Nearby, a slight, gray-haired woman stands quietly beside a kiosk where trail maps are posted.

At 8 a.m. on the dot, she checks her watch and sets off. Striding smartly up the hill, she picks up speed. Behind her, a dozen younger hikers struggle to keep up. Some break into a jog.

“It’s kind of shocking how fast she can go,” says David McCullough, 35, of Mission Viejo, clutching a bottle of Gatorade and gamely trying to keep pace.

She is Debbie Jacobowitz, 75, the no-nonsense leader of the Sierra Club’s Sierra Sage group conditioning hikes. Three times a week, Jacobowitz whizzes up trails from Laguna Beach to the mountains.

“She’s incredible,” says Sid Greenbaum, 56, of Dana Point, who first hiked with Jacobowitz three years ago when he was training for a mountain trek in Nepal. He jokes that he’s still tired--from the hikes with her.

“I only hope when I’m her age I can do it too,” he says, echoing the sentiments of most hikers who follow in her wake.

Jacobowitz, who clearly loves being in the lead, is modest about her skills.

“People want a good workout, and I try to give them that,” she says.

Indeed.

Today’s jaunt is an eight-mile, two-hour-plus power walk that leads first to a local geologic wonder known as the Red Rocks. From there, it’s onto the fittingly named Billy Goat Trail, a narrow wisp that hugs a ridgeline between the mountains and the Aliso Creek headwaters.

Occasionally, you get a peak at the houses massed on the ridgelines of the Portola Hills development. But for long stretches of time, the countryside appears much as it might have a century ago.

Today’s hiking crowd includes schoolteachers and engineers, a Xerox services manager, a retired father and his grown daughter, and Jady Enomoto, a young woman with a pierced tongue.

“Most people my age like extreme sports or going to the clubs,” says Enomoto, 23, of Garden Grove. “I come from an outdoorsy, athletic family.”

Jacobowitz didn’t begin hiking until 1990, at age 63. A New York City public school music teacher, she moved to California from Brooklyn that year to help with a son’s children.

“I loved it. I thought, ‘Oh, Southern California is the place for me,’ because everyone here likes to exercise,” she says. “I’ve always loved to exercise, but back there I was an oddball.”

A gentleman neighbor at the Leisure World senior community in Laguna Woods took her hiking at Mt. Wilson. Jacobowitz fell in love with hiking.

Within a year, she was leading treks. Sierra Club hike leaders train for several days, and must know CPR and other emergency medical training. Jacobowitz has also learned how to avoid trouble on the trail. Instead of checking faces when would-be hikers show up, she inspects their shoes.

“If they don’t have good lug soles, I really advise against them coming,” she says.

But she has learned not to judge every book by its cover. When a very large hiker showed up one week, she urged him to reconsider.

“He smirked,” she recalled sheepishly. “He beat me up the mountain.”

One man who did not tell a leader he had a preexisting medical condition died of a heart attack on an Orange County Sierra Club hike about a year ago, Jacobowitz says. Now, everyone must sign a waiver before setting out.

Jacobowitz, a vegetarian who says she hasn’t been sick in several years, believes that people with health problems have a responsibility to tell hike leaders beforehand. She has never lost anybody, but one man with epilepsy suffered a seizure atop a peak in Laguna Beach.

“He scared the other hikers terribly,” Jacobowitz says. “He should have told me he was epileptic.”

Despite, or because of, her plain-spoken manner, Jacobowitz has the respect of fellow hikers, though it’s her stamina that people tend to talk about.

“We all have high regard for her physical capability,” says Chet Stipe, outings chairman for the Sierra Sage group. “Sunday morning, well, it’s quite a workout. Last time I went with her, we got to the top, and she made everybody stop and do exercises.”

Today is no different. As hikers pant and puff to the top of the ridge, Jacobowitz gathers them under what is now a blazing sun in a bright blue sky for a quick round of stretches.

She appears almost puzzled by people who find the going difficult.

“There he is. Tell him to come up here!” she says from the crest, looking back down at a straggler.

“I think he would if he could, mom,” says her son, Lee Jacobi, who has shortened his family name. He leads hikes himself but says his mother’s are tougher.

Jacobowitz’s mother, a native of Finland, made her spend an hour outdoors every day as a child, even on the coldest days. She spent much of the time walking, but never hiked.

Cold weather is still her nemesis. Jacobowitz grew so chilled on a strenuous climb up San Gorgonio Peak a few years ago that the trip leader threw an emergency blanket around her and forced her to rest.

Short of that, not much stops her.

She wakes at 2:30 a.m., does two hours of ballet, heads to the gym at 4 a.m. for several hours of yoga and weightlifting. She is annoyed that she has shrunk an inch and a half from mild osteoporosis. She stands 5 feet, 3 inches and weighs 100 pounds.

On the trail, conversation varies with age groups. As the hikers enter a cool, shady glade of trees, older members discuss the potential risks of potato sugar for diabetics, while the 23-year-old talks about piercings and tattoos.

But everyone delights in the mammoth live oaks, the native grasses and wildflowers, and shake their fists at the development that occasionally clutters a view.

“I always feel like I’ve been on vacation for a week,” Jacobowitz says as the dull roar of traffic can suddenly be heard through the green woods.

The hike winds down along several busy blocks of Portola Parkway and ends at the parking lot where it began. It’s hard to believe there are clear creeks and meadows a few hundred yards away.

“I’m going to hike for another 30 years,” Jacobowitz says. “It’s not just living a long time that’s important, it’s the quality of that life.”