1st Ward Handcart Trek: Dairy Fork
While our children were in their teenage years we had the opportunity to go on three treks. Each of them had their own special challenges and experiences.
The first one we were involved with was one where our ward rented handcarts and took them up to Dairy Fork in Spanish Fork Canyon. Jeff and Linda Baird were chosen to be the youth leaders on the trek and had some real challenges.
I don’t remember how many families we had or carts but there were probably around 8 or so. The first day we were to trek to a site at the bottom of the hill and camp there. As we were traveling we were also going to only eat what food the pioneers would have most likely eaten. Our first trial was one family where the parents had taken watermelon and hid it in a stream so that when they got real tired and rested they could have a cold piece of watermelon to refresh them. It was not good when they were the only family eating watermelon at that stop. We also trekked a lot faster than we had thought possible so we actually decided to go to the top of the hill to a large meadow where we had planned to stop the second day and stayed there that night. It was an interesting place because the meadow was filled with wild onions that would start to let off scent when walked upon. We actually ended up putting onions in our stew that night for supper.
We had a great night and an evening fireside that worked out really well. Jeff and some of the others whom had had Timberline Training used their expertise to put on quite a fun show.
The next morning we got up and it looked like it was going to rain so we quickly had breakfast and then loaded the carts. One family loaded their cart from the back not watching how they placed the weight and it suddenly tipped backwards spilling all their equipment on the now wet ground since it had started to rain.
After everyone was packed up we started on over the ridge and down the other side. It was now raining pretty good and as we started down the road on the other side of the hill it was getting really muddy. Marie even slipped once and almost went under one of the wheels. We decided to stop the carts and see how much further we would have to go to get to some level ground where we could set up camp to wait out the rain. Then we had the second major trial of the trek. One of the families decided they were going to turn around and not wait for the three or four of us whom had gone down to check out the lay of the land. They decided to start pushing their cart back up the hill and go down to the other side. Well, carts are meant to be pulled, not pushed, and consequently one wheel came off. This caused some major stress as everyone was getting soaked and since they wouldn’t wait for the decision it was placing major stress on the leaders and especially the youth leaders. Jeff at that point started to suffer from the stress and became somewhat ill. We finally had to put him into a truck and take him back. We had decided, due to the actions of the one family, to go back down the hill to where we had planned at first to stay the first night. There we would set up the games and everything that we had planned and do them there.
We got all of the carts turned around and started back up the hill as the rain stopped and it became a beautiful day. The roads were still muddy but dried out fairly fast. We went back to the place where we were going to camp and set up our tents. It would be interesting to note at this point that the mishaps to the carts were all in just one family, the family that had put watermelon in the creek and decided they were not going to wait for their leaders decisions in the rain.
That night for our campfire we had a lesson (talk) from Sister Karen Long who gave experiences from the actual handcart treks showing where there were also families on them that would not follow the council of the leaders and caused a lot of hardships to some of those treks as well. Jeff got better after we had gotten him warmed up with the heater in the truck and was able to then again lead the trek. He didn’t really want to very bad but did it and did it well.
It was at that camp where two boys from our family decided to hike out to the café at sheep creek, across from where we started to trek up Dairy Fork, since it was only about three miles away. There they had a hamburger and then came back to brag about it. It caused some major problems as well. We also found out that they were taking food from other families as well since they were so hungry.
Well things got calmed down and we played a number of games and then after the campfire program went to bed. We arose the next morning and decided to do a service project for the area before we went back home. We decided to clean up some campfire pits that had broken beer bottles and trash in the campfire pits. Once again we got to see the difference in people as it became apparent that some of the boys were doing as little as they possibly could. We finally assigned them to areas where they were the only ones and they had to have it cleaned up before we could leave. We ended up actually cleaning up the trash along the road as we trekked back to Sheep Creek where we loaded the carts for transporting back to town. We met back at the church and had a real good meal made by the mothers of the youth and it all ended on a great note with a lot of valuable insights to people personalities and how the Lord will sometimes step in and teach them small but effective lessons.
