By Marie Ammerman
As many of you know, GLS has had a weekly hike in Griffith Park since its inception. You may also know that the Sierra Club requires two leaders for all such outings, and given the conditions on these hikes—darkness, steep and sometimes rutted trails, many intersections—two leaders are very necessary. Unfortunately, it’s become increasingly difficult to find enough leaders to cover every single week, all year round. We have had to cancel at least one hike because we could not find two leaders; we have had leaders hiking with injuries just to be sure the weekly hike went ahead. We simply can’t go on this way, and with the potential for cancellations anyway due to the strong El Nino predicted, the GLS leadership has decided to try going to a schedule of two hikes per month during the winter. The Griffith Park Conditioning Hike will now officially take place on the first and third Wednesdays during the months of December through March. We will take up a weekly schedule again in April, when we sometimes see an increase in hike attendance.
For those of you who will miss hiking every single week, we encourage you to get together and plan your own private hikes. GLS cannot arrange these for you, or take any responsibility for them, but we always encourage people to get out there and have a good time in nature. Maybe take these non-hike Wednesdays to invite other GLS hikers to explore trails in your neighborhood, or to get together socially in some way. Whatever you do, we wish you the best during this winter, and hope you’ll be able to join us for those two hikes each month. Thank you for your understanding, and for your support of GLS and of our dedicated leaders.
