Participants know popular treks are a far cry from the handcart pioneers' sufferings

SALT LAKE CITY – "Goin' on trek."

The phrase doesn't refer to the television/movie sci-fi franchise, the brand of bicycles nor the Boers' "Great Trek" inland migration in southern Africa in the 1830s and '40s.

In the LDS Church vernacular, "trek" means a modern-day re-enactment of the Mormon pioneers who crossed the Great Plains and Wyoming's Continental Divide en route the Salt Lake Valley.

Almost always those youth-oriented re-enactments use the pulling of smaller handcarts across rugged stretches of land rather than full-size wagons drawn by horses, mules or oxen. It's for the same reason LDS Church leaders tried the handcart mode with 10 pioneer companies in the 1850s — because of the cost and logistics of arranging for the livestock and the larger wagons.

As park of trek re-enactments over the past decade and a half, LDS youths and adults wearing period attire have struggled to pull the handcarts over rocks and ridges and through sage and sand, all the time learning of the sacrifices and struggles of 19th century pioneers — more specifically the ill-fated 1856 Martin and Willie handcart companies, revered for their faithfulness and sacrifice.

Comprising 980 European emigrants, the two companies started their cross-country journey disastrously late and were halted in central Wyoming by early, heavy snows and severe temperatures before being rescued. More than 20 percent of the 980 died along the way.

"We're trying to get this generation to realize something of our heritage," said Elder Robert L. Backman, an emeritus general authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who wonders if Mormon pioneer stories would "seem like fairy tales" if LDS youth didn't have a chance to replicate the trek experience.

"You can't be on that trail very long without the spirit touching you," he said.

Eighteen-year-old Rebecca Ehlert, who participated in the East Millcreek North Stake's four-day, 28-mile trek in June, agrees.

"I absolutely loved it, and in a spiritual sense it was very rewarding to me," she said. "The whole experience is so humbling for what the Saints then went through."

While pioneers and related trappings have long been a staple of Mormon pageants and parades, handcart treks date back to BYU's summer Especially For Youth program, where they were more of a survival-type experience than a pioneer re-enactment.