Not-so-leisurely stroll with Cascadians

YAKIMA, Wash. — For years I’ve wanted to get out with the Cascadians’ Tuesday hiking group, but there were two problems.

A group of Cascadians hikers listens to trip leader Ted Gamlem, left, atop Earl Peak on July 21, with Mount Stuart looming in the background. Outdoors Editor Scott Sandsberry managed to catch up with the Cascadians — or at least try — during one of their recent Tuesday outings. (SCOTT SANDSBERRY/Yakima Herald-Republic)

1) They hike on Tuesdays, a day on which I hike around the basement of the Herald-Republic building.

2) They’re the Cascadian Tuesdays.

Suffice it to say their reputation precedes them. If you show up for a hike without knowing about the Tuesdays — a bunch of folks, mostly in their 50s, 60s and 70s (and even occasional 80s), who can bolt up a steep grade wearing day-packs as if they were skating on the Greenway — you could be in for a challenging day.

I joined the Tuesdays a couple of weeks back for a hike up 7,036-foot Earl Peak at the north end of the Teanaway, that wonderfully rugged country between Cle Elum and the Stewart Range. In the group was a couple of 40-something relative youngsters who had hiked the week before with the Tuesdays.

“We pulled into the parking lot and saw the group,” recalled Esther Lanphier, “and we thought, ‘This will be sort of lah-di-dah.’ Let’s just say it was humbling.”

After that experience, Ed Miley, a very fit 48-year-old, was telling some Spokane friends about the Cascadians — including the fact that many are retirees — and his friends clearly got the wrong mental image.

“I was pretty much, ‘Oh, you have no idea,’” Miley said. “I was in awe. I’m still in awe.”

I had known going in I was in way over my head, but this clinched it: Sue Gunderson, who sometimes leads weekend Cascadian hikes with her husband, Mike, said, “Oh, but I haven’t hiked for 21?2 weeks,” she said, “so I’m going to be way back.”

And she said it with a straight face.

After 21?2 WEEKS? Crikey, I’m not sure I’ve done any real hiking in 21?2 YEARS.

This was a stalwart bunch. While walking behind a 62-year-old fellow named Greg Wallace, I asked about his knee brace. He told me he had torn his ACL while skiing last winter, and because he isn’t about to miss out on the hiking season, he doesn’t plan to get it operated on until the fall … or even later.

“I don’t know if I’ll get it done then either,” he said. “I’d miss part of the skiing season.”

At another point I was walking along behind Pat Sexton, who’s 70 and was chatting with hike leader Ted Gamlem with the ease someone riding an elevator.

“Ted, I was a rock star on top of Mount Adams the other day,” Pat was saying to Gamlem. “Everybody wanted to meet the 70-year-old who made it.”

Pat and Ted chuckled a little about that. Not me. Laughing takes too much breath. I had to save mine. Earl Peak isn’t a long hike, maybe seven or eight miles round-trip, but it’s an uphill grind. Not the kind of hike conducive to major conversations on the way up, unless you’re a Cascadian.

For Pat, this hike was barely a warmup. He’s getting himself in shape to do the “Rim to Rim to Rim” hike this October at the Grand Canyon — starting at the south rim, descending to the canyon basin and then ascending the north rim — a one-way trek of about 23 very difficult miles — and then returning. “So Pat’s been bugging us about, hey, why can’t we do more more long hikes, for gosh sakes,” Ted laughed.

Pat also plans to take a Chinook-to-White Pass training hike in September. I did that 29-mile hike once, four years ago. I’m fairly certain I crawled the last part.

I will say, though, the dozen hikers going to Earl Peak didn’t seem to be trying to set any land-speed records or outdo one another. There was a genuine feeling of camaraderie, with hikers generally staying together in twos and threes. Even when I was lagging behind, there was always another hiker willing to keep me company as I walked. (OK, honesty in advertising: As I trudged. Or staggered.)

On the way down, when my gimpy knees were aching from the pounding of the downhill, Mike McCutchen — a retired firefighter, longtime triathlete and fourth-year Cascadian — was monumentally patient with me, going my pace. I think it gave him a chance to catch up on his sleepwalking.

None of this was in keeping the Tuesdays’ old reputation of inadvertently running off prospective newcomers simply by, well, running off. That high-octane pace was still their style as recently as three years ago, when Carol Fletcher and her husband joined.

“When we first started, we kept up, but oh, it was hard,” Carol told me on the trail to Earl Peak. “And I was just amazed at how they never seemed to stop. If you stopped to take a picture, you almost had to run to catch up with them.”

Ted Gamlem — the Cascadians’ day-hike committee chairman, and the leader of many Tuesday hikes, including this one — said the club has been working to lose that reputation and become more user-friendly. They don’t want to scare off any would-be new members.

Nor should they. The Cascadians want and need new blood, since so few of their members are under the age of 50. But if you’re new to the area or new to hiking, the Cascadians are simply the best way to visit the outdoors: They always know where to hike and when — for the best wildflower displays, the best early snow-free hikes, the best views and, for those in good enough shape to keep up with some of those ultra-hardy septuagenarians, the best workouts.

On top of Earl Peak, Esther Lanphier pointed a walking stick toward 71-year-old Ted. “By the end of August,” she vowed, “I’m going to be able to stay up with him. That’s my goal.”

Here’s my goal: Not to become so delusional as to believe I could ever keep up with Ted.

• Outdoors editor Scott Sandsberry can be reached at 509-577-7689 or ssandsberry@yakimaherald.com. To learn more about Cascadians outings — some of which aren’t quite as difficult as the Tuesdays, some even more so — go online to www.cascadians.org/