Better Bring Your Coronavirus Checklist
Remember the days when you could enjoy life and go outside to get some fresh air and exercise? Yeah, those were the days, I tell you. I wrote a few articles not so long ago about how Sun Valley was such a great place given that we have such ready access to so many hiking trails, all within a few minutes’ drive of our “downtown.”
That may be, but now we’re faced with the restrictions and protocols of a coronavirus world. Just do a search for hiking trails in Los Angeles County and the odds are you’ll happen upon the Los Angeles county public health website, just like I did. If you want to know if it’s safe to go out hiking, well yes, hiking trails are open but the bureaucrats at the public health department want to make doubly sure that you follow all the rules.
Of course someone gets paid to write down all the guidelines we should follow which probably justifies their existence to some extent but exactly how many people are actually going to read these guidelines?
Well, I’m one of those people and I thought it would be entertaining just to share these guidelines with you, as if each one of us we’re really going to follow these protocols to the letter. The guidelines in their PDF state that hikers should become familiar with the following trail user passing protocols:
-Gain and maintain eye contact (stare at strangers on the trail)
-Provide adequate physical distancing when passing others (no pushing, of course)
-Step off trail to allow others to pass as needed, where safely possible (what if you meet on a very narrow bridge?)
-Announce your intention before passing to give slower trail users an opportunity to move to a safe location (with a bullhorn? Glockenspiel? Cuzoo?)
Another “don’t” listed on the PDF says that if you are on a trail and noticed a crowd ahead of you turn back. All the safety protocols seem rather humorous to me. We’re all pretty much aware of what we need to do to stay safe in the midst of this coronavirus. The only thing lacking on the public health department site is the warning “abandon hope all ye enter here.”
So it’s worth a read if you’re really anxious about taking a hike and trying to get some exercise these days but for the most part I get a chuckle out of reading it. The upshot is the hiking trails are open (we’ve got a ton of them here around Sun Valley, California) and be careful when you’re hiking. See? I could’ve saved a lot of verbiage for the Los Angeles County Public Health Department.
