If I were one of the parents of the injured kids, I would sue the Church! 1 cup of water per day? That's torture! They put Jodi Hildebrandt in prison for doing stuff like that!
To be fair, about half way through the adults, several of which were doctors, put their feet down. There was a bunch of shouting and one parent stormed off. He came back later with his truck full of 55 gallon water jugs. The stake president finally relented and told the kids to drink all they wanted. They also increased the food allowance. The first day we got a sandwich at 9:00 am and at 10:00 pm they gave us beef broth and a roll. The second day we got three meals, though there was not enough to go around. Day three adults started making food runs. After that there was food but it was cheap like pasta.
Those poor parents probably paid out of their own pockets to feed the kids when the leaders of a multi-billion dollar organization can afford it all thousands of times over
I immediately imagined that at least part of the adult shouting was something like "What do you *mean* there's no food budget and nobody brought enough water?!?"
These Trek stories are always so deeply sadistic. Really glad I left before it became a thing.
Hmm, that's actually kinda accurate to the way BY ignored the needs of the handcart companies and looked after his own interests as well. Well played MFMC?
Shouldn't they be doing Trek in the winter? Then those who die from Hypothermia can get a one-way ticket to the Celestial Kingdom! Or at least the body parts that are lost to frost bite will. /s
They’d need to starve all summer and then go out in the winter skin and bones with very little clothing to get an authentic experience. Too much prep work.
Exactly. Trek is glorifying a deliberate, completely preventable human atrocity. Like let's re-enact suffering in a train car on our way to a holocaust camp. The inspired narrative around this "faithful" abusive event is entirely false. The victims were set up and never had a chance, while the leaders kept selling the dream and promising the blessings while everyone else knew better.
Normal, non-cult people were speechless that the mormons were gonna send out ignorant, clueless, inexperienced immigrants using "handcarts" something no normal person would have ever imagined using at all in any scenario for overland travel. Like using golf carts to four-wheel a thousand miles.
They preyed on the downtrodden in northern Europe. Impoverished British city dwellers would end up in the wild with wheel barrows imagine the culture shock
I felt this even when I was a TBM. Was definitely a minority voice in our area. So glad we got out before my youngest daughters had to go through anything like that!
We did a trek in st george. The first day they gave us flour and water for lunch (my friend had celiacs).They also discouraged the use of sunscreen since the pioneers wouldn't have had it. There was also a wildfire just 10 miles away but they kept it going anyways
After our first day of Trekking we got a raw potato and a slice of American cheese. They said something like the pioneers couldn't always cook or something? I was thinking, wait, the pioneers didn't know how to make a fire? What a bunch of idiots. And of course the pioneers had Kraft singles. Oh, and the intentional wrong way detour. We were all saying, this is the wrong way... nope. Then an hour later, oh, we took a wrong turn. The pioneers got lost. Again, if so, unprepared idiots. That event is what got me mentally out at 13yo. Lots more abuse happened on that Trek and me and two others got kicked off early. My friends mom picked us up, was super pissed at US, until she heard the stories. Then our parents all unleashed on the organizers.
I read your comment to a TBM relative, and he had a good point:
"These leaders should remember that the handcart people suffered through the starvation because it's all they had. We don't need to copy that."
I added this: The Willy and Martin handcart companies were a massive fuck up. At their jump off point, they were warned over and over that they didn't have the necessary supplies, it was too late in the season, and that they didn't have the experience to do it safely. But their leaders didn't listen.
The handcart companies' story is only notable because everything went wrong. It's ironic that in whitewashing this from a cautionary tale of near complete disaster that endangered and ended many lives over 100 that's ago, it's endangering lives today.
A friend of mine is an ICU MD who was asked to be "Trek Medical" for the stake. When he got word that they were planning to ration food and water, he made it clear that he'd be calling the police and testifying in court against any adult who supported child endangerment.
Damn. This needs to happen every single time trek takes place. As in, a call needs to be placed, not just the threat. The leaders need to get it in their head that harming kids is not okay, ever, no matter how much Jesus loves you for doing it.
On that note, I wonder if Trek is planned by the church at Martin’s Cove or if it’s individual stakes and wards planning it. I remember being dehydrated and starved for an entire week because we did a trek/girls camp/scout camp combo.
The ranch and visitor center are church owned, but the trails and Cove itself are Bureau of Land Management. (Talk about mixing church and state..)
My parents run a trek site. They talk about this a lot. For Martin's Cove specifically, if your stake goes there for trek then you're doing their trek. They haven't specified about food before, but I'm sure they have regulation about it. Minimums and maximums and storage space. At the trek site they run, they do have certain things they recommend based on the terrain, but the stakes don't have to listen to that advice.
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The trek that I was a last-minute addition to as the nurse had an MD there as medical, and he was very clear that the kids would be provided adequate hydration. He made them add stake provided water bottles for the kids to have at all times and a water truck that they had stops scheduled for the truck so they could fill their water up so that the kids stayed hydrated. I walked up and down the line of kids to keep an eye on them and make sure they were drinking water. I about killed myself off doing it, especially since that night I found out that I had no food planned for me for the entire duration.
Nope. I was told very explicitly by the other staff that they didn't have anything for me. This wasn't beforehand, so I could have brought food. This was after I was already in Wyoming and had been walking all day to make sure the kids stayed hydrated.
You have to be careful of those Wet Bulb events. If the temperature is high as well as the humidity your body will not be able to cool off from sweating.
That's exactly it. The previous stake YM president was actually *bragging* about how many participants had to be taken to the hospital. He seemed to think it proved the experience was "authentic".
I think by "authentic", he meant "For the hardest day, they marched in a 14-mile circle and ended up in the same parking lot they left that morning."
>On top of that, why would cos-playing as a pioneer bring kids closer to Jesus? Wouldn’t it be more impactful to do a Jesus trek and cos-play as Jesus’ apostles?
Trek is designed to trauma bond impressionable young people to the church. It takes them out of their comfort zone, puts them in a highly emotional and manipulative environments, then tells them they're feeling the spirit of the church, not of Jesus. How hard and uncomfortable the experience actually is seems to depend on leader roulette, but the core goal is emotional manipulation.
The hardships of the pioneers is the church's origin story, not Jesus's. It's very much glamorized and then used as a cudgel to beat you with:
"If the pioneers could endure ALL that, surely you can handle \*fill in the blank\*."
"Your ancestors went through all that because they knew it was true. You are letting them down."
Except Mormon pioneers were not special. Do Oregon kids do Treks to commemorate the Oregon trail? Or how about Californians reenacting the Donner party crossing the Sierra Nevadas? I simply don’t get the pioneer fetish in Utah and among Mormons. Our ancestors were not special, the US was just expanding west.
Fwiw, the stakes in California really did emphasize The Battalion returning to Utah. My trek however was pretty lax, with only the exception of "the girls do the hard part" still in.
The rationale: Because that's what the actual women did when the men got sent off to the Mormon Battalion.
The truth: Just a trauma bond, make the girls feel more subservient and the boys feel more guilty.
Except that nobody bothered to check their facts on that. The mormon battalion was in 1846. The first handcart company was not formed until a full decade later in 1856.
Whoever told you that was 10 years off.
Because someone didn't fact-check their history and thought that the women were alone pulling their handcarts while the men were away at the mormon battalion. They're 10 years off.
Mormon battalion: 1846.
Handcarts: 1856.
That, and handcarts were only about 3% of the pioneers. More mormon migrants prior to 1890 came to Utah by train than by handcart.
Every one of the "forced migrations" due "religious persecution" was the Mormons own damned fault.
They threw their weight around politically and economically (like they are now in several towns over the temples), committed theft from neighbors, created illegal banks (Kirtland Safety Society), counterfeited, defaulted on debts, did morally repulsive things like "marrying" underage girls (polite name for child rape) committed treasonous activities against the government of Missouri and Illinois and on and on.
Not to mention the Long March of Chinese Communist Party fame. The entire Cultural Revolution was set up to be a sort of "trek" for the younger generation that had not yet been broken by the party.
Leaving the church has opened my eyes to a lot of this crazy shit.
Yup. Extremely good point. It’s purely for “wow someone was willing to die for the cult? Must be something very important to it.” When really it was just the really terrible machinations of misguided men.
I mean...people cosplay reenact a whole variety of wars. US Civil, WW1, WW2, even US Revolution. None of that involves actually killing their cosplay opponents. It's pretend, that's why it's called cos-play.
I'm fascinated by it! It would be fun in a civil war reinactment-esque fashion where nothing bad really happens. It's a huge tragedy but I think it's really amazing how much we have learned about it through kept record and modern science. But no, I wouldn't actually want to starve and eat my fellow man, thanks!
I remember it being kind of fun, but I was used to doing much longer hikes at the time with heavier backpacks. But then it got overly religious. We were all assigned names at the beginning of actual pioneers, and we shared whatever fate they did. If your character died on the trail, you weren't allowed to pull the cart anymore, but you could push, since there stories that some pioneers felt like they were being pushed by spirits or something. Then they had a devotional where all the dead people told everyone how they died, and then bore testimony. It was so manipulative.
I'd never send my own kid on a trip like that.
Maybe because they believe in Joe Smith more than Jesus. So maybe tar and feather someone, then shoot him and his brother. The “real” mormon experience.
This is ridiculous. People in the 1840s had different lifestyle and physical demands. They walked nearly everywhere, everyday, their diet was vastly different.
Not saying they didn't suffer but to make 21st century kids do 19th century stuff on a whim is dangerous.
TSCC should pull the plug on this abuse.
It was in the CNN today that 50 youth from Salina were caught in a lightning storm, and 7 were taken to the hospital.
My daughter talked her way out of going to Trek this year. I'm so proud. She stayed with me instead, where we have air conditioning, sleeping in, and no indoctrination or pictures of Jesus.
Her mom went anyway as a ma/auntie/whatever. It was a massive stake-wide event run by priesthood bullies (just like the real pioneer handcart companies!) and I'm told the kids had a miserable time.
The idea of trek reminds me of some Catholics in the Philippines that felt they had to endure part of the crucifixion to get closer to Jesus. Many would whip themselves or allow others to whip them and they’d hang from a cross for roughly the same amount of time.
Not sure how that is spiritually edifying?
Yep, it's called mortification of the flesh. The idea is that the suffering brings you closer to the suffering of the passion of the Christ.
Hey, if you're an adult and that's your thing, go for it. Subjecting it to kids is extremely abusive.
I was on one of those brutal ones in Wyoming! I testify that everything you said is true and did happen -- I had blisters that covered the entire underside of my foot after the first day and couldn't walk by the end.
Muddy Gap isn't just a place. It's a state of mind. And, it's a bleak enough experience to just drive out there in a car. I lived in WY for many years, and I love it, but it is a hard enough place without cosplaying as martyrs.
Treks are simply a ridiculous new found tradition, now made obligatory. Summers are already booked for many families with vacations, girls camp, scout camps, etc… The trek rules are plain hogwash with the non historical ”women’s pull” rationed water, camp invasions by “bad guys.
There is no sense in forcing kids into miserable conditions.
Absolutely avoid these time wasters.
That's correct. People will tell you that all these women pulled their handcarts while the men marched off in the mormon battalion. It's hogwash. The mormon battalion marched off in 1847. The first handcart company wasn't until a whole decade later in 1857.
It's terrible when they make young woman feel at trek.
Make them do something difficult on their own to "appreciate" the young men. It's terrible. In my ward they made them pull the carts bythemselves up a really steep hill and men the young men watch. Then after so long the young men "came back from war" and could help them. It's so gross.
They dont even do trek historically correct. Was there ever rationing? Did they ever have a all female wagon train because all the men "went to war"?
It's all revisionist history to push whatever stake presidents narrative.
Ahh yes the women’s pull. They pick the biggest hill they can find and make women do it together. Like hellooo pretty sure the boys would struggle a little too, they wouldn’t be flying up the mountain. It was so awkward having everyone watch you.
No, there was never a "women's pull" comany. Some women pulled their handcarts, but it was NOT because the the men were off in the mormon battalion. It's hogwash. The mormon battalion marched off in 1847. The first handcart company wasn't until a whole decade later in 1857.
The first time I went on trek, I literally collapsed after the women's pull. In sacrament meeting the next week, I bore my testimony, saying that I thought it was harder for the men that had to watch us without helping. Why nobody saw that as a red flag, I have no idea, but I would never do that to my children.
So… I actually have fond memories of my own experiences on Trek. As a person who grew up privileged, Trek was the first time I ever ate food because I needed it, not because I wanted it.
We had these nasty, slightly burned grits we made over the fire, and I hadn’t eaten basically all day. It was disgusting, but I had to eat, because I knew I was waking up to do it all again the next morning and I needed the energy…
I think about that experience a lot… it changed me for the better, and opened my eyes to what REAL struggle is.
That said, **withholding water is unacceptable.**
Responsibly cosplaying like your ancestors and helping youth understand what REAL poverty and struggle feels like is a valuable experience, imo.
I have always felt that getting youth out of their comfort zone and doing hard physical things is a good character building option. The planned trauma bonding and indoctrination is now looking pretty cringey though.
I share the same experience. Wasn't easy but enjoyed it actually. But I wasn't obese or other complications, we were given all the water we needed, even rides if requested. Limiting water is insane.
Yeah, they handed out Gatorade when I did Trek. We still had some people get dehydrated, but it was because they just didn’t drink enough, not because anyone *withheld* anything.
Can lead a teenager to water but you can’t force them to drink. lol.
Same-I loved trek. I actually was able to do it twice-since our stake in CO went every four years up to WY where the pioneers aCtUaLlY tRaVeLeD. But it was mostly glorified camping with my friends. There were def hard times but I was the one who had to show off how tough I was basically anywhere I went, so it was great opportunity for me to show every one up 🤣
My trek experience was pretty great too! We were in the Wyoming area. Our ward (heart of Morridor) wore hospital scrubs, had few pairs. We did our walks and when we made it to our camp, people were set up to feed us and tents already set up for us. Of course did the churchy stuff and women did the walk. It was pretty decent overall from what I remember.
My trek all they gave us 4 oz of flour the first day, to mimic the real pioneers. They also got us lost and we had to do a few extra miles, totaling 13 miles that first day, on zero food (unless you ate breakfast before leaving, or brought snacks, which due to difficult home life, I had done neither). We ended the day around 1-2 am, to some awful stew, even under those circumstances you know it was bad because I struggled to stomach it, instead binging on 8 bread rolls instead. My "family" also had 2 special needs kids who were never expected to pull so the "work" of pulling the handcart was definitely unfairly distributed. Our water was dirty so I stopped drinking it, I think I was legit hallucinating because my journal entries on the 2nd and 3rd day are not coherent. We also had a "woman's pull" where they made just the women do the hardest stretch on that first day. All done in dresses we sewed ourselves. Of everyone I've spoken to about trek, I've only heard of one that sounded worse than mine, where they had to kill their own chickens for food. I had just turned 14 so 4 years later when they did it again, I had opportunity to go again and said absolutely the fuck not. But tell me how this doesn't fit into BITE model of cults lmao
When I went to trek each ‘family’ had to kill a chicken and eat it for dinner. It took me years to eat chicken again. The way they sprung it on us. Very traumatizing!
I remember going to Martin’s cove or whatever it’s called as ma and pa. I’m glad I could take time off of work to help indoctrinate a bunch of kids and reinforce a bunch of BS stories.
I think making the youth read “Devil’s Gate” by David Roberts would be more than enough to reinforce their faith…err, make them realize how messed up celebrating the handcart disaster is.
Thanks for the book recommendation. My ancestors were luckily in the first handcart company, but so easily could have been in a later group. Just downloaded the book on Kindle and looking forward to the read.
I had my foot run over by the wagon wheel on pioneer trek. The cart literally weighed a ton. I got a horribly sprained and bruised foot and ankle. I was supposed to continue, but not push the cart.
But there was the woman's pull, where at one of the hardest hills to push the cart, only women were allowed to push. I felt like I couldn't just watch as the rest of the women struggled. So I helped, and continued to push the cart after that.
That was over 20 years ago. I now have arthritis in that foot and ankle, and have pain every single day from that pioneer trek experience.
One thing that my tbm parents never made me do was trek. I appreciate the shit out of that. My mom said it sounded like it sucked and never made me go 😅 she said she didn’t go when was younger either. Thank you mom for that!
My parents have done Trek for quite a few years, my dad always does muzzle loading with the kids which is super cool.
The last one they did I went along as a volunteer to help with camp and muzzle loading. My dad had me bring a cooler full of steak, burgers and hot dogs to cook for the kids. The stake president tried to stop us from cooking for them and my dad just told him off. It was glorious.
I have more than one horror story about Trek. I was a last-minute addition to trek one year since the nurse they had originally had to bow out. What no one told me was that I needed to bring my own food and tent. The other "staff" had been meeting for months and had their meals all planned out. Most of them treated me like shit on their shoes, and they had no extra food for me. Some sisters I knew that were staff let me stay in their tent. All I had to eat were a couple of protein bars I had brought. Another couple I knew who were part of the mountain man village let me have leftovers from their breakfast on the third day. She said if she had known, she would have made sure I had food. I went three days with almost nothing to eat. We sent one kid from our group to the hospital after the women's pull with a ruptured ovarian cyst. Another group had to fly someone out who broke their leg.
Two years later, my youngest son wanted to go, so I let him. He ended up being taken to the hospital in Evanston on the first day and then sent by lifeflight to Primary Children's Hospital. He had an undiagnosed heart problem that was triggered by the heat and strenuous activity of the trek. The leaders actually took really good care of him and got him to care quickly.
Pioneer cosplay is a great way to break down mental barriers these kids have in choosing their own trail. They are forced into a fake survival situation to enforce their bond with Mormon church conditioning.
It is the best 'temple prep' course they could have come up with.
I did mine over the winter break in my sophomore year? I live where it's possible and safe to do so. It was shit. I don't think my area has done one since COVID tbh.
Probably wasn’t even authentic- if it were a Winter Trek, you’d have cosplaying Church leaders who would call you vile sinners, administer beatings, and slaughter one of the company’s oxen for their own meal…..
Wow. I had no idea they ever tried to be intense like that. My Trek had plenty of food and water and safety nets for people who got wounded and I still found it archaic and miserable. One of the biggest wastes of time I've ever experienced.
My "family" was all the skinny kids for some stupid reason. No one over 5'7 or 140 lbs hauling a big ass wooden cart full of all our crap in the summer sun over ankle twisting rocks and hills for miles. MISERABLE.
I did a wilderness trek when I was 15. We were in Oregon, so we started in the Colombia River Gorge and hiked to Mt. Hood. 30 miles in 3 days all uphill. Although we didn't actually make it 3 days because of extreme hypothermia.
Day 1 it started to rain (surprise, it's Oregon in the spring) and didn't stop. We didn't have actual tents, just tarps. Nobody had dry clothes or shoes or sleeping bags after the first day. Everything was wet, and we still had 2 more days left.
We didn't have enough food either. And it was always the same. Breakfast: 2 granola bars and a juice box. Lunch: more granola bars and a juice box. Dinner was always a small bowl of vegetable soup and a dinner roll. The soup was cold.
On Day 2, a chaperone went to relieve herself and fell backward down a hill, breaking her ankle. Breakfast was more of the ubiquitous granola bars, while everyone tried to wring out their sleeping bags before packing up. By the time we reached camp on day 2, everyone was so cold we had stopped shivering. Four girls had collapsed from exhaustion, two girls were having a mental breakdown in the medic tent, and the medic was trying to help a boy who had hit himself in the leg with an axe. I was having chest pains, palpitations, panic attacks, and trouble breathing.
They only reason they canceled the last day was because over half the kids had hypothermia, and the other half were crying from exhaustion. Oh, and there was a late winter storm forecasted for the area.
I just went home and cried in the shower. WORST. CAMPING. TRIP. EVER.
My wife went on trek when she was young and said at the time she felt such overwhelming joy and euphoria from the spiritual experience. It wasn’t until she left the church that she realize she had deluded herself into those feelings. She’s not even of “pioneer stock!” She’s a child of converts from Korea! Why her parents would ever think pushing her to attend trek is beyond me.
I wonder if part of the reason why my parents never pushed it, and were never huge on pioneer stuff generally, is because neither of them grew up in households where their parents glorified handcart pioneers. I do have some pioneers in my family tree, but between me and them are at least one generation of jackmos or exmos. Everyone else came to the morridor after a train could bring them there.
My wife thinks that being minorities in a white dominated church is what pushed her and her parents to dive even deeper into “Mormon lore.” They felt the need to prove themselves as TBMs and so went so far as to attend every event, sit at the front during sacrament, etc.
Trek is probably the worst idea in the history of the church. Forcing youth to reenact the hardest part of LDS-history just to “gain perspective”. What a load of crap. People die every year participating in Trek, all for the spiritual prompting that a made up book and a bunch of pedos were true
One of the things that isn't taken into consideration is the actual pioneers were used to life of struggle. They were used to not getting abundant water or food. That was just the way of life. Their bodies were well prepped already for hardship.
You cannot take modern people who are over fed and over hydrated and UNDER WORKED to be able to do anything actual pioneers did. Their bodies shut down immediately- as we see over and over again.
I agree with so many others that it's institutional abuse and total manipulation in an effort to get them to think and believe the way the church wants them to.
I almost had to be life flighted out of the middle of the desert due to dehydration on trek. Why was I upset? I missed the “women’s pull.”
Cult shit, man. It’s all just cult shit.
They did this in Texas in the heat and I was a TBM and in the planning meetings and I loudly said it was a horrible idea as the Texas summer don't pull punches and lo and behold the bishop ended up in the hospital with heat stroke and several others had heat stroke or dehydration. It was the dumbest thing I have seen in ages.
Some people say we should suffer like our ancestors. For some asinine reason. I think every generation should be tackling tough times so that future generations don’t suffer the same problem (they have problems of their own, after all). Never, ever understood something like Trek. And wearing all the garb too? Ridiculous and hopefully the dead pioneers are thinking it’s dumb too.
I almost died on my first trek experience (due to my age I had to do one at 14 and again at 18). Before dinner, sixteen kids got sent home due to heat related injury. As the sun set, a massive storm blew through and destroyed what would have been our camp sites and food. Everything was flooded. We couldn’t push the carts. This was like 2000 so cell phones were scarce. Around midnight, someone had finally found shelter for all of us (hundreds of kids) and it took like three hours to get us all there. Luckily they canceled the rest of trek. My second time around we didn’t get flooded, but I remember we had to catch and kill chickens to eat for dinner and that was all there was. If you didn’t eat the chicken, you didn’t eat.
Two of my siblings have permanent injuries from trek. My sister, in her mid 20s, recently had to have hip surgery because of that trek injury.
Fuck trek.
Good ol’ Mormon LARPing season.
I full believe (and even testify) that if the pioneers came back to life today and saw all this, they would be like “lol are you nuts?”
Our stake did trek every 4 years, had to be 14 or older to go. I was barely too young to go the first time, then had a new job I just started working right after high school so couldn't go to that one either. #soblessed
Ok everyone, we are going to induce euphoria by starving and overworking you. After that has been achieved we'll ask that, in your altered state you ask Jebus if the Book of Mormon is true. then Ice Cream.
I got stuck in a literal tornado on trek last year and we had to hide in a rickety old barn for two hours. People were calling it a 'miracle' for the next three days.
So yeah, I think we should do trek again. It's so safe.
Trek teaches the youth of the church a distorted, almost theme park version of that aspect of church history. Most early pioneers traveled in relative ease and safety in what was a typically well-organized journey, especially once the Winter Quarters debacle was behind them.
The later handcart companies roughed it more, but only two, the Willie and Martin groups, got into real trouble because of early snows in 1856. There were tragedies in those groups, and sadly, most of them could have been avoided if not for the assholery of apostle Franklin D. Richards, who denounced as faithless apostates any in the groups who were hesitant about setting off across the North American interior so late in the summer.
I bet they don't teach that to the kids on the so-called trek.
I fucking hated trek I went on it back in 2002 and got a really bad case of heat stroke on the first day and the leaders just ignored my complaints about being light headed and really nausious and forced me to continue to pull the damn cart till I nearly passed out and started throwing up. and even then they refused to take action and just had me walk beside the cart. This went on the entire week. it really messed up my body to the point that even today more than 20 years later I overheat very easily and can get sick in the heat very quickly which sucks because I loved growing up going out in the summers to backpack and camp but after trek that all ended.
The "real"est part about modern trek re-enactments is the incompetence of the church leaders who have the final say on everything, and who lord it over everyone else.
That was exactly the same in 1847.
If I were to do a trek re-enactment, I'd take the train. More lds immigrants to Utah came by train than by handcart. Lots more. Like, thousands more. Handcart-pullers totaled a whopping 3% of mormon immigrants.
Oh man, trek was one of the worst experiences of my youth, can'tbelieve they put us through that shit. Shout out to my 'family' group though, we kept each other sane with good humor at least. Eastern PA around 2003 or 2004 I think
Kids get hurt all the time when doing activities with the church. When my husband was in BS (90’s) 2 kids died at camp, and just yesterday a bunch of boys were struck by lightening on a hike.
Classic psychological Conditioning. Make it hard and then show them the light. Reprieve only comes thru acceptance of the beliefs. My parents did the same with psychological conditioning, curating situations of guilt and shame, and amplifying the “relief” during punishment for my ‘sins’, highlighting spiritual repentance processes and offering forgiveness and love conditional on my performativity of the faith that they wanted to see.
We did a shorter Trek on a youth trip and for some reason the leaders thought it was okay to still do the Trek in triple degree heat. Several of us, including myself, got so sick we had to be put into the handcarts to be hauled back to the bus because we couldn't walk any further. Honestly kind of surprised something worse didn't happen to us, I was literally starting to show signs of heat stroke and never received any medical attention.
There are a lot of sadists in this church as well as stupid people so dumb they shouldn’t be let out of the house without a leash. Taking well-nourished, well-hydrated girls and boys out to march around in a hot, dry desert is the height of frank stupidity. Does no one in this church use their head to THINK WITH? The “mormon pioneers”, just like “pioneers” everywhere back then were lean, muscular and use to hard work and times and deprivations. Even so, *they died.*
Taking someone out in the unrelenting heat and dust, in long hot, itchy dresses, who is used to drinking 4 or more full glasses of liquid in an day and giving them **a single cup of water** to last all day on consecutive days could seriously effect a girl’s kidneys and heart. Same with drastically cut “rations” while walking and helping to tug on a replica of a handcart in the heat. The mormon forefathers didn’t cruise along in an airplane until they were dropped down to pull a handcart. They had lived their entire life in what we would now call deprivation, we don’t. The “Trek” is a stupid idea and doesn’t teach anyone anything “spiritual”. Lucky that “the leaders” didn’t have someone along with undiagnosed diabetes or kidney problems. Lawsuit anyone?
My families stake is doing “Moroni’s Quest” this year instead of Trek. Instead of dressing up as pioneers they dressed up as Nephites. (Ancient Native Americans) (Classical Greek tunics and headbands)
I am forever thankful that trek wasn't a thing when I was young. One question, though... how is this not considered child abuse or, in the very least, child endangerment??? You're taking kids out into the heat, making them walk for hours & denying them water? wth
I did the trek as a teen too. I ended up hurt and unable to walk so they basically killed me off. Literally told our group I was “dead” and wouldn’t let me do anything to help. We were also rationed but since I was dead I got better food and water. When anyone complained they would gaslight us with lectures on how it was 1-pretend so don’t be taking it all wrong 2-we get to go home to a nice bed, AC and all the food we want 3-not really that bad bc we know we are actually safe and not going to die on the trek 4-we needed to be praying so that Heavenly Father can help us. All this did was fuck things up worse plus make the other girls VERY resentful towards me. I was treated horribly by them for the next 3 years.
My daughter, who has a large social media following just did a post about Trek- Even though her following has no connection to the EXMO community I was absolutely astounded by how many comments were Exmos reliving Trek drama and experiences…the rest just seemed to comment how strange Mormons are….😂
The rationing, sleep deprivation, exhaustion, high pressure indoctrination tactics (followed by group "testimony" meetings) are right out of the brain washing 101 manual, and are standard in any gulag work camp, re-education camp, etc.
I was absolutely traumatized on trek when they had us kill chickens for food. I’m a vegan now so you can imagine the emotional damage I still carry with me today. Fuck the church.
Also the “pioneers” they celebrate were more like murderers and thieves for what they did to the native peoples and others.
They do know some pioneers died crossing the wilderness, don’t they? I hope someone at the hospital notified the authorities.
My first thought regarding the title was recalling when my therapist suggested that my work ethic leans into massochism, and I was in denial because, well, this ☝️☝️ How could I be a massochist when I’d never ever put myself and especially not my child through a trek, especially an “authentic” one with no life-staining water? How could I be that when I spend Sunday mornings in bed snuggling my pup and chatting with my favorite human, my child?
Well, my therapist was right, and I am wrangling in my programming to work so hard to “earn the right” to lay in bed all morning. It is refreshing to just live for the sake of living, without bargaining to deserve anything.
Why can’t they just be thankful god gives us water, shelter, and comfortable clothing? Regardless of god or godly energy existing, gratitude is all that is necessary to spiritually and emotionally flourish.
That is insane. A few weeks after our stakes last trek (about 5 plus years ago) a parent from a different stake at the same ranch literally died of dehydration. No one should purposely harm anyone for these role playing games.
I went to trek when I was 12 and planned on doing it again 4 years later but my stake decided not to do it for some reason. I didn't like anything about trek even as a little deacon. The only two things I remember were the older kids in my "family" talking bad about me and said I didn't help push the cart, even though I did. And the other thing I remember was hearing crying in the middle of the night, so I went to see what was going on and a random girl that I'd never seen before who was in a different "family" and campsite was sitting by our fire. So, I went out of the tent and sat across the fire from her but didn't have the courage to ask what was wrong or try to comfort her. I hope I helped at least a little bit and she's doing okay.
What's funny is my husband and kids have left. We've been out for 3-4 years. My 17 year old daughter wanted to go on trek. Our trek doesn't torture kids. Haha. Anyway, all the active teens complained the whole time, or just refused to go, and my daughter who sees herself as tough and strong went and had a great time. She dressed in pants and and a button up shirt (no skirt). Haha. I love it. We have a female handcart pioneer ancestor who was really a badass and my daughter gained a big respect for her ancestor. We can acknowledge the accomplishment of our ancestor and brush the religious beliefs aside. I think it bugs other parents in the ward that my apostate daughter had a great time while their kids were miserable. Hehe🥰
Our water wasn’t rationed but our lunch usually was rationed.. one meal was ramen broth and another was cheese, jerky, and a roll🤬 on the other hand my friends trek was all catered like cafe rio and noodles/company!
>Wouldn’t it be more impactful to
Actually do acts of service for *others in need* (not cleaning the church, maintaining the grounds or working in the cults orchards, etc), and maybe, oh, I don't know... practice living a selfless life and showing love and respect to everyone?
When you read journal accounts of those who crossed the plains under severe weather conditions and duress, you question why the church does this at all?
It’s just another example of the church white-washing the history of the church so that the new generation only sees the positive. So many people unnecessarily suffered due to the incompetence of so many individuals (Brigham Young being the number one) and the youth of those particular stakes are just playing at it? It seems so disrespectful to those who gave up and sacrificed so much for a false religion
I almost attended a trek when I was 15, but a month beforehand I got a sinus infection when traveling from Utah to California with my dad for his job (he used to be a long-haul trucker). I also have exercise induced asthma, so I decided that going places that summer wasn’t in my best health interests; I backed out of both trek and girls camp that year.
My mom made an appointment with our bishop to try and convince me to go. It’s the most manipulative thing she ever did, btw. Even though the meeting with her and the bishop had both her and myself in tears, I actually held my ground and refused to give in. After reading the comments, I’m so proud of 15yo me for saying no and meaning it!
I never let my kids do trek. We're in Australia and I saw zero point to the exercise. Especially given that we were definitely considered inferior by any missionaries from Morridor
I completely forgot trek season existed. When were these early days of rationing? Because I only remember one trek going on when I was a youth (and I somehow got out of it. I think I complained too much to my mom and refused to go so I stayed home while my younger brother and sister went), and I don’t remember people complaining about rations. I finished high school in 2005 for time reference
I was 16 when I was told by my abusive parents I was "going" to trek. Nope, thank god we were poor as fuck and I told my parents I would only go if they paid me what I would be missing not working at my summer job. So glad I never had to participate in that madness
They do this yearly now?! I had to do it once for the centennial and assumed it was just celebratory cosplay. NGL, it was kinda of fun bc I "broke my leg" and had to ride in the wagon 98% of the time. FTW
I remember the first time Trek was announced and our ward went it must have been around 1995 or 1996. It was largely “unregulated” and the idea of trek must have been spreading around like wildfire. A bunch of us sourced vintage long sleeve dresses from closets of our grandmothers to go. This was also the time the Airplane dramatization skits were going around.
Seemed like the year or two after our ward went every stake was going but then we started hearing the stories of wards making their teens killing chickens, feeding them a roll all day and not feeding kids. Seems like a total lawsuit waiting to happen nowadays.
I remember being made to remove our shoes and socks for the Trek, and ended up getting stung on the bottom of my foot by a bee I had stepped on, forcing me to limp through cow shit with an open wound on my foot. Great times lol
My youngest daughter (now in her 20s) did not participate in Trek. Instead she did a girls' trip to another country with mom, sisters and sister-in-law. She got flak from other youth and leaders about how she was missing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. No question which one was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. (Oh, and BTW, we had a fantastic trip).
Wow that's a terrible experience. Thats not at all how trek was each time I went. We were constantly reminded to drink more and more water and could stop anytime we wanted and given a ride in a car. I actually really enjoyed it. Its definitely unnecessary to approach it like that.
As a leader of the young mens I got out of going. My daughter was playing a soccer tournament in California the same week that she had several college coaches coming to watch her play. Then the week after her and I flew to Liverpool so she could participate in a clinic with Liverpool who my cousin played for and coach's their youth teams.
If I were one of the parents of the injured kids, I would sue the Church! 1 cup of water per day? That's torture! They put Jodi Hildebrandt in prison for doing stuff like that!
To be fair, about half way through the adults, several of which were doctors, put their feet down. There was a bunch of shouting and one parent stormed off. He came back later with his truck full of 55 gallon water jugs. The stake president finally relented and told the kids to drink all they wanted. They also increased the food allowance. The first day we got a sandwich at 9:00 am and at 10:00 pm they gave us beef broth and a roll. The second day we got three meals, though there was not enough to go around. Day three adults started making food runs. After that there was food but it was cheap like pasta.
Those poor parents probably paid out of their own pockets to feed the kids when the leaders of a multi-billion dollar organization can afford it all thousands of times over
I immediately imagined that at least part of the adult shouting was something like "What do you *mean* there's no food budget and nobody brought enough water?!?" These Trek stories are always so deeply sadistic. Really glad I left before it became a thing.
Hmm, that's actually kinda accurate to the way BY ignored the needs of the handcart companies and looked after his own interests as well. Well played MFMC?
historically accurate if anything
Shouldn't they be doing Trek in the winter? Then those who die from Hypothermia can get a one-way ticket to the Celestial Kingdom! Or at least the body parts that are lost to frost bite will. /s
They’d need to starve all summer and then go out in the winter skin and bones with very little clothing to get an authentic experience. Too much prep work.
true
Exactly. Trek is glorifying a deliberate, completely preventable human atrocity. Like let's re-enact suffering in a train car on our way to a holocaust camp. The inspired narrative around this "faithful" abusive event is entirely false. The victims were set up and never had a chance, while the leaders kept selling the dream and promising the blessings while everyone else knew better. Normal, non-cult people were speechless that the mormons were gonna send out ignorant, clueless, inexperienced immigrants using "handcarts" something no normal person would have ever imagined using at all in any scenario for overland travel. Like using golf carts to four-wheel a thousand miles.
They preyed on the downtrodden in northern Europe. Impoverished British city dwellers would end up in the wild with wheel barrows imagine the culture shock
I felt this even when I was a TBM. Was definitely a minority voice in our area. So glad we got out before my youngest daughters had to go through anything like that!
It sounds like it was a while ago, so it was probably just a singular-billion dollar organization (/s and jokes because I 100% agree with you)
It is very similar to what Briggy demanded of the handcart companies. They suffered and died and he lived and traveled in style.
We did a trek in st george. The first day they gave us flour and water for lunch (my friend had celiacs).They also discouraged the use of sunscreen since the pioneers wouldn't have had it. There was also a wildfire just 10 miles away but they kept it going anyways
That is insane!
Why didn't they just make a miracle and feed the masses with a fish and a loaf of bread.
Don't expect reason from an unreasonable organization
The miracle would be for the kid who snuck his cell phone in to order doordash to the location. Ha ha.
It sounds like the whole thing was a cluster f\*ck.
Omg we had beef broth and a roll too, and it rained and the rolls were so soggy like blobs of clay.
After our first day of Trekking we got a raw potato and a slice of American cheese. They said something like the pioneers couldn't always cook or something? I was thinking, wait, the pioneers didn't know how to make a fire? What a bunch of idiots. And of course the pioneers had Kraft singles. Oh, and the intentional wrong way detour. We were all saying, this is the wrong way... nope. Then an hour later, oh, we took a wrong turn. The pioneers got lost. Again, if so, unprepared idiots. That event is what got me mentally out at 13yo. Lots more abuse happened on that Trek and me and two others got kicked off early. My friends mom picked us up, was super pissed at US, until she heard the stories. Then our parents all unleashed on the organizers.
And the TBM’s are so grateful they having a living prophet to be inspired to introduce such abusive programs.
I read your comment to a TBM relative, and he had a good point: "These leaders should remember that the handcart people suffered through the starvation because it's all they had. We don't need to copy that." I added this: The Willy and Martin handcart companies were a massive fuck up. At their jump off point, they were warned over and over that they didn't have the necessary supplies, it was too late in the season, and that they didn't have the experience to do it safely. But their leaders didn't listen. The handcart companies' story is only notable because everything went wrong. It's ironic that in whitewashing this from a cautionary tale of near complete disaster that endangered and ended many lives over 100 that's ago, it's endangering lives today.
A friend of mine is an ICU MD who was asked to be "Trek Medical" for the stake. When he got word that they were planning to ration food and water, he made it clear that he'd be calling the police and testifying in court against any adult who supported child endangerment.
Damn. This needs to happen every single time trek takes place. As in, a call needs to be placed, not just the threat. The leaders need to get it in their head that harming kids is not okay, ever, no matter how much Jesus loves you for doing it.
On that note, I wonder if Trek is planned by the church at Martin’s Cove or if it’s individual stakes and wards planning it. I remember being dehydrated and starved for an entire week because we did a trek/girls camp/scout camp combo. The ranch and visitor center are church owned, but the trails and Cove itself are Bureau of Land Management. (Talk about mixing church and state..)
My parents run a trek site. They talk about this a lot. For Martin's Cove specifically, if your stake goes there for trek then you're doing their trek. They haven't specified about food before, but I'm sure they have regulation about it. Minimums and maximums and storage space. At the trek site they run, they do have certain things they recommend based on the terrain, but the stakes don't have to listen to that advice.
TBF, most BLM land is available to rent, lease, etc
I'm too old for this! I was just getting used to BLM meaning “Black Lives Matter”!
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The trek that I was a last-minute addition to as the nurse had an MD there as medical, and he was very clear that the kids would be provided adequate hydration. He made them add stake provided water bottles for the kids to have at all times and a water truck that they had stops scheduled for the truck so they could fill their water up so that the kids stayed hydrated. I walked up and down the line of kids to keep an eye on them and make sure they were drinking water. I about killed myself off doing it, especially since that night I found out that I had no food planned for me for the entire duration.
They added you to the ‘staff’ but didn’t allot any food for you?!?
Nope. I was told very explicitly by the other staff that they didn't have anything for me. This wasn't beforehand, so I could have brought food. This was after I was already in Wyoming and had been walking all day to make sure the kids stayed hydrated.
Good on him. Pretty sure he'd be a mandatory reporter in most states, but still, good on him for letting it be known how he would respond.
Just curious, did this happen in the morridor or somewhere else?
Somewhere else, where triple-digit temps and high humidity are expected during summer.
You have to be careful of those Wet Bulb events. If the temperature is high as well as the humidity your body will not be able to cool off from sweating.
That's exactly it. The previous stake YM president was actually *bragging* about how many participants had to be taken to the hospital. He seemed to think it proved the experience was "authentic". I think by "authentic", he meant "For the hardest day, they marched in a 14-mile circle and ended up in the same parking lot they left that morning."
Time to treat that dude to some frontier justice.
>On top of that, why would cos-playing as a pioneer bring kids closer to Jesus? Wouldn’t it be more impactful to do a Jesus trek and cos-play as Jesus’ apostles? Trek is designed to trauma bond impressionable young people to the church. It takes them out of their comfort zone, puts them in a highly emotional and manipulative environments, then tells them they're feeling the spirit of the church, not of Jesus. How hard and uncomfortable the experience actually is seems to depend on leader roulette, but the core goal is emotional manipulation. The hardships of the pioneers is the church's origin story, not Jesus's. It's very much glamorized and then used as a cudgel to beat you with: "If the pioneers could endure ALL that, surely you can handle \*fill in the blank\*." "Your ancestors went through all that because they knew it was true. You are letting them down."
Except Mormon pioneers were not special. Do Oregon kids do Treks to commemorate the Oregon trail? Or how about Californians reenacting the Donner party crossing the Sierra Nevadas? I simply don’t get the pioneer fetish in Utah and among Mormons. Our ancestors were not special, the US was just expanding west.
Reminds me of that quote, "What's good about the church isn't unique and what's unique about the church isn't good"
Fwiw, the stakes in California really did emphasize The Battalion returning to Utah. My trek however was pretty lax, with only the exception of "the girls do the hard part" still in.
Why did the girls have to do the hard part?
The rationale: Because that's what the actual women did when the men got sent off to the Mormon Battalion. The truth: Just a trauma bond, make the girls feel more subservient and the boys feel more guilty.
Except that nobody bothered to check their facts on that. The mormon battalion was in 1846. The first handcart company was not formed until a full decade later in 1856. Whoever told you that was 10 years off.
Because someone didn't fact-check their history and thought that the women were alone pulling their handcarts while the men were away at the mormon battalion. They're 10 years off. Mormon battalion: 1846. Handcarts: 1856. That, and handcarts were only about 3% of the pioneers. More mormon migrants prior to 1890 came to Utah by train than by handcart.
But but but….. religion and persecution!!!!! Those “others” just wanted to travel, we were FORCED!!!
By all those haters ^(who didn't want Mormon men sleeping with their wives and teenage daughters.)
Every one of the "forced migrations" due "religious persecution" was the Mormons own damned fault. They threw their weight around politically and economically (like they are now in several towns over the temples), committed theft from neighbors, created illegal banks (Kirtland Safety Society), counterfeited, defaulted on debts, did morally repulsive things like "marrying" underage girls (polite name for child rape) committed treasonous activities against the government of Missouri and Illinois and on and on.
Not to mention the Long March of Chinese Communist Party fame. The entire Cultural Revolution was set up to be a sort of "trek" for the younger generation that had not yet been broken by the party. Leaving the church has opened my eyes to a lot of this crazy shit.
Yup. Extremely good point. It’s purely for “wow someone was willing to die for the cult? Must be something very important to it.” When really it was just the really terrible machinations of misguided men.
If there was a cosplay reenactment of the Donner party I'd sign up. Sounds like a hoot
Except the crossing the salt flats part. No thank you. Oh and the getting stuck in the snow and cannibalism
Besides that it would be a blast!
Bring your own meat.
I am my own meat. Oh wait. I am someone else's meat!
The funny thing is I'm actually vegetarian
Plowing their way along the hasting’s cutoff or the salt flats would suck.
/s? Because eating the people who are dying around you from starvation isn't typically known for good times.
I mean...people cosplay reenact a whole variety of wars. US Civil, WW1, WW2, even US Revolution. None of that involves actually killing their cosplay opponents. It's pretend, that's why it's called cos-play.
I'm fascinated by it! It would be fun in a civil war reinactment-esque fashion where nothing bad really happens. It's a huge tragedy but I think it's really amazing how much we have learned about it through kept record and modern science. But no, I wouldn't actually want to starve and eat my fellow man, thanks!
Lol. Good to know. And actually it would be kind of interesting as long as no one starved to death.
You need to read Ordeal by Hunger. Or watch the documentary on pbs American Experience The Donner Party
When I talk to Mormons about the "pioneers," I refer to them as "settlers."
You think they know that? Far as they teach the Mormon youth, it was only Mormons who did that
As a boy scout, I love trek. As a parent, I'm horrified. As an ex-theist, I'm disgusted.
I remember it being kind of fun, but I was used to doing much longer hikes at the time with heavier backpacks. But then it got overly religious. We were all assigned names at the beginning of actual pioneers, and we shared whatever fate they did. If your character died on the trail, you weren't allowed to pull the cart anymore, but you could push, since there stories that some pioneers felt like they were being pushed by spirits or something. Then they had a devotional where all the dead people told everyone how they died, and then bore testimony. It was so manipulative. I'd never send my own kid on a trip like that.
On my trek if you died you got to leave your family and walk with the other ‘dead people’. I really really wanted to die
This is so ridiculous 😂
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Why not crucify someone, stick them in a cave, and see if they're still there after three days? /s
Maybe because they believe in Joe Smith more than Jesus. So maybe tar and feather someone, then shoot him and his brother. The “real” mormon experience.
This is ridiculous. People in the 1840s had different lifestyle and physical demands. They walked nearly everywhere, everyday, their diet was vastly different. Not saying they didn't suffer but to make 21st century kids do 19th century stuff on a whim is dangerous. TSCC should pull the plug on this abuse. It was in the CNN today that 50 youth from Salina were caught in a lightning storm, and 7 were taken to the hospital.
it was also not nearly as hot back then. The temperatures have been rising each and every year for decades now due to climate change.
My daughter talked her way out of going to Trek this year. I'm so proud. She stayed with me instead, where we have air conditioning, sleeping in, and no indoctrination or pictures of Jesus. Her mom went anyway as a ma/auntie/whatever. It was a massive stake-wide event run by priesthood bullies (just like the real pioneer handcart companies!) and I'm told the kids had a miserable time.
I told my teenage daughter that I would not allow her to go. She told me later she was relieved because she didn’t want to go, but felt pressured.
The idea of trek reminds me of some Catholics in the Philippines that felt they had to endure part of the crucifixion to get closer to Jesus. Many would whip themselves or allow others to whip them and they’d hang from a cross for roughly the same amount of time. Not sure how that is spiritually edifying?
Yep, it's called mortification of the flesh. The idea is that the suffering brings you closer to the suffering of the passion of the Christ. Hey, if you're an adult and that's your thing, go for it. Subjecting it to kids is extremely abusive.
I was on one of those brutal ones in Wyoming! I testify that everything you said is true and did happen -- I had blisters that covered the entire underside of my foot after the first day and couldn't walk by the end.
Muddy Gap isn't just a place. It's a state of mind. And, it's a bleak enough experience to just drive out there in a car. I lived in WY for many years, and I love it, but it is a hard enough place without cosplaying as martyrs.
Treks are simply a ridiculous new found tradition, now made obligatory. Summers are already booked for many families with vacations, girls camp, scout camps, etc… The trek rules are plain hogwash with the non historical ”women’s pull” rationed water, camp invasions by “bad guys. There is no sense in forcing kids into miserable conditions. Absolutely avoid these time wasters.
I luckily never did trek with my stake but the "women's pull" is non-historical? Jesus Christ
That's correct. People will tell you that all these women pulled their handcarts while the men marched off in the mormon battalion. It's hogwash. The mormon battalion marched off in 1847. The first handcart company wasn't until a whole decade later in 1857.
🤦🏻, unbelievable. I had never thought about the dates. Wasn’t it Russell Ballard who said, “we’re as honest as we know how to be”? Lying bastards.
Oh my godddddd I’d forgotten about the camp invasions!!!! That was so fucking terrifying!!
It's terrible when they make young woman feel at trek. Make them do something difficult on their own to "appreciate" the young men. It's terrible. In my ward they made them pull the carts bythemselves up a really steep hill and men the young men watch. Then after so long the young men "came back from war" and could help them. It's so gross. They dont even do trek historically correct. Was there ever rationing? Did they ever have a all female wagon train because all the men "went to war"? It's all revisionist history to push whatever stake presidents narrative.
Ahh yes the women’s pull. They pick the biggest hill they can find and make women do it together. Like hellooo pretty sure the boys would struggle a little too, they wouldn’t be flying up the mountain. It was so awkward having everyone watch you.
No, there was never a "women's pull" comany. Some women pulled their handcarts, but it was NOT because the the men were off in the mormon battalion. It's hogwash. The mormon battalion marched off in 1847. The first handcart company wasn't until a whole decade later in 1857.
The first time I went on trek, I literally collapsed after the women's pull. In sacrament meeting the next week, I bore my testimony, saying that I thought it was harder for the men that had to watch us without helping. Why nobody saw that as a red flag, I have no idea, but I would never do that to my children.
So… I actually have fond memories of my own experiences on Trek. As a person who grew up privileged, Trek was the first time I ever ate food because I needed it, not because I wanted it. We had these nasty, slightly burned grits we made over the fire, and I hadn’t eaten basically all day. It was disgusting, but I had to eat, because I knew I was waking up to do it all again the next morning and I needed the energy… I think about that experience a lot… it changed me for the better, and opened my eyes to what REAL struggle is. That said, **withholding water is unacceptable.** Responsibly cosplaying like your ancestors and helping youth understand what REAL poverty and struggle feels like is a valuable experience, imo.
I have always felt that getting youth out of their comfort zone and doing hard physical things is a good character building option. The planned trauma bonding and indoctrination is now looking pretty cringey though.
I share the same experience. Wasn't easy but enjoyed it actually. But I wasn't obese or other complications, we were given all the water we needed, even rides if requested. Limiting water is insane.
Yeah, they handed out Gatorade when I did Trek. We still had some people get dehydrated, but it was because they just didn’t drink enough, not because anyone *withheld* anything. Can lead a teenager to water but you can’t force them to drink. lol.
Same-I loved trek. I actually was able to do it twice-since our stake in CO went every four years up to WY where the pioneers aCtUaLlY tRaVeLeD. But it was mostly glorified camping with my friends. There were def hard times but I was the one who had to show off how tough I was basically anywhere I went, so it was great opportunity for me to show every one up 🤣
My trek experience was pretty great too! We were in the Wyoming area. Our ward (heart of Morridor) wore hospital scrubs, had few pairs. We did our walks and when we made it to our camp, people were set up to feed us and tents already set up for us. Of course did the churchy stuff and women did the walk. It was pretty decent overall from what I remember.
My trek all they gave us 4 oz of flour the first day, to mimic the real pioneers. They also got us lost and we had to do a few extra miles, totaling 13 miles that first day, on zero food (unless you ate breakfast before leaving, or brought snacks, which due to difficult home life, I had done neither). We ended the day around 1-2 am, to some awful stew, even under those circumstances you know it was bad because I struggled to stomach it, instead binging on 8 bread rolls instead. My "family" also had 2 special needs kids who were never expected to pull so the "work" of pulling the handcart was definitely unfairly distributed. Our water was dirty so I stopped drinking it, I think I was legit hallucinating because my journal entries on the 2nd and 3rd day are not coherent. We also had a "woman's pull" where they made just the women do the hardest stretch on that first day. All done in dresses we sewed ourselves. Of everyone I've spoken to about trek, I've only heard of one that sounded worse than mine, where they had to kill their own chickens for food. I had just turned 14 so 4 years later when they did it again, I had opportunity to go again and said absolutely the fuck not. But tell me how this doesn't fit into BITE model of cults lmao
When I went to trek each ‘family’ had to kill a chicken and eat it for dinner. It took me years to eat chicken again. The way they sprung it on us. Very traumatizing!
Omg we had to kill chickens for food!! I HATED that!
A bunch of kids were just hit by lightning on the trek. This cosplay with inexperienced ill prepared adults. Needs to stop!
It’s the human trafficking remembrance.
I remember going to Martin’s cove or whatever it’s called as ma and pa. I’m glad I could take time off of work to help indoctrinate a bunch of kids and reinforce a bunch of BS stories.
I think making the youth read “Devil’s Gate” by David Roberts would be more than enough to reinforce their faith…err, make them realize how messed up celebrating the handcart disaster is.
Interesting. I haven’t heard of it
Thanks for the book recommendation. My ancestors were luckily in the first handcart company, but so easily could have been in a later group. Just downloaded the book on Kindle and looking forward to the read.
Trek was one of my gateways out of the church. It just seemed so fucked up to me that we were cosplaying a preventable tragedy.
I had my foot run over by the wagon wheel on pioneer trek. The cart literally weighed a ton. I got a horribly sprained and bruised foot and ankle. I was supposed to continue, but not push the cart. But there was the woman's pull, where at one of the hardest hills to push the cart, only women were allowed to push. I felt like I couldn't just watch as the rest of the women struggled. So I helped, and continued to push the cart after that. That was over 20 years ago. I now have arthritis in that foot and ankle, and have pain every single day from that pioneer trek experience.
One thing that my tbm parents never made me do was trek. I appreciate the shit out of that. My mom said it sounded like it sucked and never made me go 😅 she said she didn’t go when was younger either. Thank you mom for that!
Thank goodness for relatively sane TBM parents! Mine weren't perfect, but holy hell, I got off easy compared to what I've heard from so many exmos.
My parents have done Trek for quite a few years, my dad always does muzzle loading with the kids which is super cool. The last one they did I went along as a volunteer to help with camp and muzzle loading. My dad had me bring a cooler full of steak, burgers and hot dogs to cook for the kids. The stake president tried to stop us from cooking for them and my dad just told him off. It was glorious.
I have more than one horror story about Trek. I was a last-minute addition to trek one year since the nurse they had originally had to bow out. What no one told me was that I needed to bring my own food and tent. The other "staff" had been meeting for months and had their meals all planned out. Most of them treated me like shit on their shoes, and they had no extra food for me. Some sisters I knew that were staff let me stay in their tent. All I had to eat were a couple of protein bars I had brought. Another couple I knew who were part of the mountain man village let me have leftovers from their breakfast on the third day. She said if she had known, she would have made sure I had food. I went three days with almost nothing to eat. We sent one kid from our group to the hospital after the women's pull with a ruptured ovarian cyst. Another group had to fly someone out who broke their leg. Two years later, my youngest son wanted to go, so I let him. He ended up being taken to the hospital in Evanston on the first day and then sent by lifeflight to Primary Children's Hospital. He had an undiagnosed heart problem that was triggered by the heat and strenuous activity of the trek. The leaders actually took really good care of him and got him to care quickly.
On our trek we were given a bag of rice as our “baby” to take care of. Said baby donated its life when we were extra hungry… lol.
Pioneer cosplay is a great way to break down mental barriers these kids have in choosing their own trail. They are forced into a fake survival situation to enforce their bond with Mormon church conditioning. It is the best 'temple prep' course they could have come up with.
It is literally brain washing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwashing
I did mine over the winter break in my sophomore year? I live where it's possible and safe to do so. It was shit. I don't think my area has done one since COVID tbh.
Probably wasn’t even authentic- if it were a Winter Trek, you’d have cosplaying Church leaders who would call you vile sinners, administer beatings, and slaughter one of the company’s oxen for their own meal…..
Wow. I had no idea they ever tried to be intense like that. My Trek had plenty of food and water and safety nets for people who got wounded and I still found it archaic and miserable. One of the biggest wastes of time I've ever experienced. My "family" was all the skinny kids for some stupid reason. No one over 5'7 or 140 lbs hauling a big ass wooden cart full of all our crap in the summer sun over ankle twisting rocks and hills for miles. MISERABLE.
I did a wilderness trek when I was 15. We were in Oregon, so we started in the Colombia River Gorge and hiked to Mt. Hood. 30 miles in 3 days all uphill. Although we didn't actually make it 3 days because of extreme hypothermia. Day 1 it started to rain (surprise, it's Oregon in the spring) and didn't stop. We didn't have actual tents, just tarps. Nobody had dry clothes or shoes or sleeping bags after the first day. Everything was wet, and we still had 2 more days left. We didn't have enough food either. And it was always the same. Breakfast: 2 granola bars and a juice box. Lunch: more granola bars and a juice box. Dinner was always a small bowl of vegetable soup and a dinner roll. The soup was cold. On Day 2, a chaperone went to relieve herself and fell backward down a hill, breaking her ankle. Breakfast was more of the ubiquitous granola bars, while everyone tried to wring out their sleeping bags before packing up. By the time we reached camp on day 2, everyone was so cold we had stopped shivering. Four girls had collapsed from exhaustion, two girls were having a mental breakdown in the medic tent, and the medic was trying to help a boy who had hit himself in the leg with an axe. I was having chest pains, palpitations, panic attacks, and trouble breathing. They only reason they canceled the last day was because over half the kids had hypothermia, and the other half were crying from exhaustion. Oh, and there was a late winter storm forecasted for the area. I just went home and cried in the shower. WORST. CAMPING. TRIP. EVER.
My wife went on trek when she was young and said at the time she felt such overwhelming joy and euphoria from the spiritual experience. It wasn’t until she left the church that she realize she had deluded herself into those feelings. She’s not even of “pioneer stock!” She’s a child of converts from Korea! Why her parents would ever think pushing her to attend trek is beyond me.
I wonder if part of the reason why my parents never pushed it, and were never huge on pioneer stuff generally, is because neither of them grew up in households where their parents glorified handcart pioneers. I do have some pioneers in my family tree, but between me and them are at least one generation of jackmos or exmos. Everyone else came to the morridor after a train could bring them there.
My wife thinks that being minorities in a white dominated church is what pushed her and her parents to dive even deeper into “Mormon lore.” They felt the need to prove themselves as TBMs and so went so far as to attend every event, sit at the front during sacrament, etc.
Trek is probably the worst idea in the history of the church. Forcing youth to reenact the hardest part of LDS-history just to “gain perspective”. What a load of crap. People die every year participating in Trek, all for the spiritual prompting that a made up book and a bunch of pedos were true
One of the things that isn't taken into consideration is the actual pioneers were used to life of struggle. They were used to not getting abundant water or food. That was just the way of life. Their bodies were well prepped already for hardship. You cannot take modern people who are over fed and over hydrated and UNDER WORKED to be able to do anything actual pioneers did. Their bodies shut down immediately- as we see over and over again. I agree with so many others that it's institutional abuse and total manipulation in an effort to get them to think and believe the way the church wants them to.
I almost had to be life flighted out of the middle of the desert due to dehydration on trek. Why was I upset? I missed the “women’s pull.” Cult shit, man. It’s all just cult shit.
They did this in Texas in the heat and I was a TBM and in the planning meetings and I loudly said it was a horrible idea as the Texas summer don't pull punches and lo and behold the bishop ended up in the hospital with heat stroke and several others had heat stroke or dehydration. It was the dumbest thing I have seen in ages.
But the pioneers did this so that future generations wouldn’t have to.
Exactly
Some people say we should suffer like our ancestors. For some asinine reason. I think every generation should be tackling tough times so that future generations don’t suffer the same problem (they have problems of their own, after all). Never, ever understood something like Trek. And wearing all the garb too? Ridiculous and hopefully the dead pioneers are thinking it’s dumb too.
I almost died on my first trek experience (due to my age I had to do one at 14 and again at 18). Before dinner, sixteen kids got sent home due to heat related injury. As the sun set, a massive storm blew through and destroyed what would have been our camp sites and food. Everything was flooded. We couldn’t push the carts. This was like 2000 so cell phones were scarce. Around midnight, someone had finally found shelter for all of us (hundreds of kids) and it took like three hours to get us all there. Luckily they canceled the rest of trek. My second time around we didn’t get flooded, but I remember we had to catch and kill chickens to eat for dinner and that was all there was. If you didn’t eat the chicken, you didn’t eat. Two of my siblings have permanent injuries from trek. My sister, in her mid 20s, recently had to have hip surgery because of that trek injury. Fuck trek.
Good ol’ Mormon LARPing season. I full believe (and even testify) that if the pioneers came back to life today and saw all this, they would be like “lol are you nuts?”
Our stake did trek every 4 years, had to be 14 or older to go. I was barely too young to go the first time, then had a new job I just started working right after high school so couldn't go to that one either. #soblessed
My parents didn't let me go on trek or EFY, they were afraid I would get introuble.
Ok everyone, we are going to induce euphoria by starving and overworking you. After that has been achieved we'll ask that, in your altered state you ask Jebus if the Book of Mormon is true. then Ice Cream.
I got stuck in a literal tornado on trek last year and we had to hide in a rickety old barn for two hours. People were calling it a 'miracle' for the next three days. So yeah, I think we should do trek again. It's so safe.
This is child abuse.
Call the authorities.
Worst week of my life was trek
Stake presidents everywhere: “I know the answer to our retention problem, cult cosplay and starvation! Eureka!”
Trek teaches the youth of the church a distorted, almost theme park version of that aspect of church history. Most early pioneers traveled in relative ease and safety in what was a typically well-organized journey, especially once the Winter Quarters debacle was behind them. The later handcart companies roughed it more, but only two, the Willie and Martin groups, got into real trouble because of early snows in 1856. There were tragedies in those groups, and sadly, most of them could have been avoided if not for the assholery of apostle Franklin D. Richards, who denounced as faithless apostates any in the groups who were hesitant about setting off across the North American interior so late in the summer. I bet they don't teach that to the kids on the so-called trek.
I fucking hated trek I went on it back in 2002 and got a really bad case of heat stroke on the first day and the leaders just ignored my complaints about being light headed and really nausious and forced me to continue to pull the damn cart till I nearly passed out and started throwing up. and even then they refused to take action and just had me walk beside the cart. This went on the entire week. it really messed up my body to the point that even today more than 20 years later I overheat very easily and can get sick in the heat very quickly which sucks because I loved growing up going out in the summers to backpack and camp but after trek that all ended.
The "real"est part about modern trek re-enactments is the incompetence of the church leaders who have the final say on everything, and who lord it over everyone else. That was exactly the same in 1847. If I were to do a trek re-enactment, I'd take the train. More lds immigrants to Utah came by train than by handcart. Lots more. Like, thousands more. Handcart-pullers totaled a whopping 3% of mormon immigrants.
So now Trek rules are an addition to the Gospel? Just like the missionary White Bible, the BYU code of conduct, and the Republican platform?
Oh man, trek was one of the worst experiences of my youth, can'tbelieve they put us through that shit. Shout out to my 'family' group though, we kept each other sane with good humor at least. Eastern PA around 2003 or 2004 I think
Kids get hurt all the time when doing activities with the church. When my husband was in BS (90’s) 2 kids died at camp, and just yesterday a bunch of boys were struck by lightening on a hike.
Classic psychological Conditioning. Make it hard and then show them the light. Reprieve only comes thru acceptance of the beliefs. My parents did the same with psychological conditioning, curating situations of guilt and shame, and amplifying the “relief” during punishment for my ‘sins’, highlighting spiritual repentance processes and offering forgiveness and love conditional on my performativity of the faith that they wanted to see.
My aunt + uncle just missed a family reunion where we celebrated my grandpa's 90th because their stake was desperate for ma/pa for trek 😭😭😭
We did a shorter Trek on a youth trip and for some reason the leaders thought it was okay to still do the Trek in triple degree heat. Several of us, including myself, got so sick we had to be put into the handcarts to be hauled back to the bus because we couldn't walk any further. Honestly kind of surprised something worse didn't happen to us, I was literally starting to show signs of heat stroke and never received any medical attention.
There are a lot of sadists in this church as well as stupid people so dumb they shouldn’t be let out of the house without a leash. Taking well-nourished, well-hydrated girls and boys out to march around in a hot, dry desert is the height of frank stupidity. Does no one in this church use their head to THINK WITH? The “mormon pioneers”, just like “pioneers” everywhere back then were lean, muscular and use to hard work and times and deprivations. Even so, *they died.* Taking someone out in the unrelenting heat and dust, in long hot, itchy dresses, who is used to drinking 4 or more full glasses of liquid in an day and giving them **a single cup of water** to last all day on consecutive days could seriously effect a girl’s kidneys and heart. Same with drastically cut “rations” while walking and helping to tug on a replica of a handcart in the heat. The mormon forefathers didn’t cruise along in an airplane until they were dropped down to pull a handcart. They had lived their entire life in what we would now call deprivation, we don’t. The “Trek” is a stupid idea and doesn’t teach anyone anything “spiritual”. Lucky that “the leaders” didn’t have someone along with undiagnosed diabetes or kidney problems. Lawsuit anyone?
My families stake is doing “Moroni’s Quest” this year instead of Trek. Instead of dressing up as pioneers they dressed up as Nephites. (Ancient Native Americans) (Classical Greek tunics and headbands)
That sounds very historically accurate. I have no questions.
Trek is psychological and physical torture. It should be illegal.
I am forever thankful that trek wasn't a thing when I was young. One question, though... how is this not considered child abuse or, in the very least, child endangerment??? You're taking kids out into the heat, making them walk for hours & denying them water? wth
One of my neighbors was a “ma” and snuck in tons of treats and snacks in with them. Secretly gave them to the kids that wanted them.
I did the trek as a teen too. I ended up hurt and unable to walk so they basically killed me off. Literally told our group I was “dead” and wouldn’t let me do anything to help. We were also rationed but since I was dead I got better food and water. When anyone complained they would gaslight us with lectures on how it was 1-pretend so don’t be taking it all wrong 2-we get to go home to a nice bed, AC and all the food we want 3-not really that bad bc we know we are actually safe and not going to die on the trek 4-we needed to be praying so that Heavenly Father can help us. All this did was fuck things up worse plus make the other girls VERY resentful towards me. I was treated horribly by them for the next 3 years.
My daughter, who has a large social media following just did a post about Trek- Even though her following has no connection to the EXMO community I was absolutely astounded by how many comments were Exmos reliving Trek drama and experiences…the rest just seemed to comment how strange Mormons are….😂
If they really wanted it to be an "authentic" experience they would be drinking coffee Trek.
The rationing, sleep deprivation, exhaustion, high pressure indoctrination tactics (followed by group "testimony" meetings) are right out of the brain washing 101 manual, and are standard in any gulag work camp, re-education camp, etc.
I was absolutely traumatized on trek when they had us kill chickens for food. I’m a vegan now so you can imagine the emotional damage I still carry with me today. Fuck the church. Also the “pioneers” they celebrate were more like murderers and thieves for what they did to the native peoples and others.
Those conditions are abusive.
They do know some pioneers died crossing the wilderness, don’t they? I hope someone at the hospital notified the authorities. My first thought regarding the title was recalling when my therapist suggested that my work ethic leans into massochism, and I was in denial because, well, this ☝️☝️ How could I be a massochist when I’d never ever put myself and especially not my child through a trek, especially an “authentic” one with no life-staining water? How could I be that when I spend Sunday mornings in bed snuggling my pup and chatting with my favorite human, my child? Well, my therapist was right, and I am wrangling in my programming to work so hard to “earn the right” to lay in bed all morning. It is refreshing to just live for the sake of living, without bargaining to deserve anything. Why can’t they just be thankful god gives us water, shelter, and comfortable clothing? Regardless of god or godly energy existing, gratitude is all that is necessary to spiritually and emotionally flourish.
Ah… Latter-day LARPing…
I'll forever be grateful that trek did not exist when I was growing up. Trek seems like yet another way the cult tortures its members.
That is insane. A few weeks after our stakes last trek (about 5 plus years ago) a parent from a different stake at the same ranch literally died of dehydration. No one should purposely harm anyone for these role playing games.
When I told my therapist about Trek she was visibly shocked.
I went to trek when I was 12 and planned on doing it again 4 years later but my stake decided not to do it for some reason. I didn't like anything about trek even as a little deacon. The only two things I remember were the older kids in my "family" talking bad about me and said I didn't help push the cart, even though I did. And the other thing I remember was hearing crying in the middle of the night, so I went to see what was going on and a random girl that I'd never seen before who was in a different "family" and campsite was sitting by our fire. So, I went out of the tent and sat across the fire from her but didn't have the courage to ask what was wrong or try to comfort her. I hope I helped at least a little bit and she's doing okay.
What's funny is my husband and kids have left. We've been out for 3-4 years. My 17 year old daughter wanted to go on trek. Our trek doesn't torture kids. Haha. Anyway, all the active teens complained the whole time, or just refused to go, and my daughter who sees herself as tough and strong went and had a great time. She dressed in pants and and a button up shirt (no skirt). Haha. I love it. We have a female handcart pioneer ancestor who was really a badass and my daughter gained a big respect for her ancestor. We can acknowledge the accomplishment of our ancestor and brush the religious beliefs aside. I think it bugs other parents in the ward that my apostate daughter had a great time while their kids were miserable. Hehe🥰
Our water wasn’t rationed but our lunch usually was rationed.. one meal was ramen broth and another was cheese, jerky, and a roll🤬 on the other hand my friends trek was all catered like cafe rio and noodles/company!
I just read an article on People’s Facebook page that 7 kids were hospitalized from trek after a lightning strike that happened yesterday
So glad this wasn’t a thing when I was a kid
Fucking hated Trek it was hot as hell and the water they had was piss warm.
>Wouldn’t it be more impactful to Actually do acts of service for *others in need* (not cleaning the church, maintaining the grounds or working in the cults orchards, etc), and maybe, oh, I don't know... practice living a selfless life and showing love and respect to everyone?
Good hell. The cult still has that abusive program?
It sounds like a modern day Hajj.
Let’s play legionnaires and early christians - get the gladiuses!
You were closer to God watching those ants than reading that book.
When you read journal accounts of those who crossed the plains under severe weather conditions and duress, you question why the church does this at all? It’s just another example of the church white-washing the history of the church so that the new generation only sees the positive. So many people unnecessarily suffered due to the incompetence of so many individuals (Brigham Young being the number one) and the youth of those particular stakes are just playing at it? It seems so disrespectful to those who gave up and sacrificed so much for a false religion
I almost attended a trek when I was 15, but a month beforehand I got a sinus infection when traveling from Utah to California with my dad for his job (he used to be a long-haul trucker). I also have exercise induced asthma, so I decided that going places that summer wasn’t in my best health interests; I backed out of both trek and girls camp that year. My mom made an appointment with our bishop to try and convince me to go. It’s the most manipulative thing she ever did, btw. Even though the meeting with her and the bishop had both her and myself in tears, I actually held my ground and refused to give in. After reading the comments, I’m so proud of 15yo me for saying no and meaning it!
I never let my kids do trek. We're in Australia and I saw zero point to the exercise. Especially given that we were definitely considered inferior by any missionaries from Morridor
I completely forgot trek season existed. When were these early days of rationing? Because I only remember one trek going on when I was a youth (and I somehow got out of it. I think I complained too much to my mom and refused to go so I stayed home while my younger brother and sister went), and I don’t remember people complaining about rations. I finished high school in 2005 for time reference
I heard somebody describe it as “Misery LARPing”, and I cannot see it as anything g else now.
I was 16 when I was told by my abusive parents I was "going" to trek. Nope, thank god we were poor as fuck and I told my parents I would only go if they paid me what I would be missing not working at my summer job. So glad I never had to participate in that madness
They do this yearly now?! I had to do it once for the centennial and assumed it was just celebratory cosplay. NGL, it was kinda of fun bc I "broke my leg" and had to ride in the wagon 98% of the time. FTW
I remember the first time Trek was announced and our ward went it must have been around 1995 or 1996. It was largely “unregulated” and the idea of trek must have been spreading around like wildfire. A bunch of us sourced vintage long sleeve dresses from closets of our grandmothers to go. This was also the time the Airplane dramatization skits were going around. Seemed like the year or two after our ward went every stake was going but then we started hearing the stories of wards making their teens killing chickens, feeding them a roll all day and not feeding kids. Seems like a total lawsuit waiting to happen nowadays.
Cosplaying as a pioneer!? If you wanna get closer to Jesus, maybe try following his teachings. 🙄
Culty AF.
I remember being made to remove our shoes and socks for the Trek, and ended up getting stung on the bottom of my foot by a bee I had stepped on, forcing me to limp through cow shit with an open wound on my foot. Great times lol
My youngest daughter (now in her 20s) did not participate in Trek. Instead she did a girls' trip to another country with mom, sisters and sister-in-law. She got flak from other youth and leaders about how she was missing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. No question which one was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. (Oh, and BTW, we had a fantastic trip).
Ahhhh yes. Mormon larping 👌🏼
Wow that's a terrible experience. Thats not at all how trek was each time I went. We were constantly reminded to drink more and more water and could stop anytime we wanted and given a ride in a car. I actually really enjoyed it. Its definitely unnecessary to approach it like that.
When I was a Mormon I wanted to go to TREK but girls camp was just enough for me
Your mom likes her hard tack, hard. Fight me.
It is shocking that a church as risk-averse as the MFMC allows trek to happen.
As a leader of the young mens I got out of going. My daughter was playing a soccer tournament in California the same week that she had several college coaches coming to watch her play. Then the week after her and I flew to Liverpool so she could participate in a clinic with Liverpool who my cousin played for and coach's their youth teams.
Trauma bonding is powerful manipulation.
One word. Gross.