Our Hike Leaders
Friends is lucky to have friends like these. Our volunteer Hike Leaders and Shepherds make our annual Spring and Fall Hiking Programs possible. Their knowledge, dedication and love of the Gorge make every hike special. Here are profiles of some of our most involved volunteers.
Become a Hike Leader!
You too can lead hikes with Friends! Contact Outdoor Programs Coordinator Maegan Jossy at maegan@gorgefriends.org or (503) 241-3762 x.103 to get involved.
Hike Leaders and Shepherds
Pat Anderson 
Pat Anderson is a septuagenarian with many years of outdoor experience who has led Friends hikes for five years. In her 20s she climbed many peaks in the Rockies and was a member of Rocky Mountain Rescue. Later she owned and operated a resort in Central Oregon where she opened the Warming Hut, a Nordic ski school. She is a certified Nordic ski instructor, was an outdoor instructor at Central Oregon Community College, and taught Nordic Skiing and Wilderness Survival. She has done mapping and recreation access contract work for the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. For several years, Pat was a lobbyist for the winter recreation industry in Salem, OR. More recently, in California, she led big-donor orientation hikes for the Nature Conservancy. Her special area of hike leader expertise is Outdoor Safety & Survival.
Debbie Asakawa
Debbie is an avid advocate of hiking in and protecting our region’s
special places. She grew up in Arizona and California but has lived in
Portland for over 20 years. Debbie holds economics and MBA degrees from
UCLA and currently edits books for accountants and economists, but her
big passion is the outdoors and convincing Portlanders that they need to
use and preserve the beauty at our doorstep. To that end, Debbie
started a women's hiking group a few years ago, now at over 100
members. They hike every week in the Gorge, Washington State, Mt Hood,
or the coast. They also snowshoe and ride bikes. Early in life, Debbie
also pursued a career as a concert pianist.
Mark Buser
Mark Buser is Vice President of the Ice Age Floods Institute and President of the local Willamette Valley Chapter of the institute. Professionally, Mark is a Financial Advisor with Johnstone Financial Advisors. He is a volunteer for the Ice Age Floods Institute, which is made up of over 700 members across 4 states. The Institute is an educational non-profit committed to being the recognized advocate, educator, and marketer of the Ice Age Floods experience as a significant international natural and cultural heritage phenomenon. Mark leads hikes on the Ice Age Floods history of the Gorge each hiking season.
Joan Carter
Joan tries to hike with Friends and Oregon Wild every month. She serves as a Friends Hike Shepherd. In recent years, she led several hikes at Eagle Creek, with a focus on the Civilian Conservation Corps work in the Pacific Northwest in the 1930s. (She loves that period and especially the work relief the CCC provided to so many young men.) Joan also spends one week per year as a crew chief for a week-long volunteer project with the American Hiking Society in the San Juan Islands. She also camps for a second week with a crew from the Yosemite Association and work on trails in the Tuolumne Meadows vicinity at 8600 ft.!
James Chase
James grew up in Missouri and started hiking, camping and canoeing in
the Ozark Mountains at a young age. He began serious backpacking 25
years ago with a group that evolved out of his son’s Boy Scout Troop,
and he has done at least one week-long trip in the western states
mountains ever since – Olympic National Park, the Northern Cascades, the
Wind River Range, the Tetons, and many more! In May 2007 James retired
from his “Corporate Life,” he and his wife moved to NW Portland, and
now cannot ever imagine living anywhere else! Friends was the first
organization James found here, and he does 10 or more Friends hikes with
them each year. James also bikes, snowshoes and skis cross-country.
Scott Cook
Scott Cook is a 15-year Hood River resident and the author of one of the Gorge's best hiking/exploring guidebooks, Curious Gorge. Scott likes to lead hikes that have a historic bent and on many of his outings Scott will provide materials like historic photos and how they relate to the Gorge area in question. If you like hiking, like history, and love the Gorge, then no doubt you'll be both entertained and enlightened on an outing with Scott.
Margo Earley
Margo is an avid hiker and tireless advocate for wilderness protection. Before "retiring" to Oregon with her husband 21 years ago, Margo lived in Connecticut and raised four children while pursuing a career in classical music: opera, recital, church and synagogue soloist. Her family's summer vacations were backpacking expeditions all over the West. In Oregon, Bev has led Wilderness backpacking trips, serving 15 years as a Sierra Club leader. Margo has also served for eight years as Secretary of the Board of Directors of Hood River Valley Residents Committee, the primary land-use watchdog in Hood River County. She also serves on the President's Council of the Wilderness Society, and leads and shepherds dayhikes during their Council meetings. In addition, Margo served three years on the Hood River Wilderness Committee pushing for additional Mount Hood Wilderness, now incorporated in the 2009 Omnibus Public Lands Bill creating 26,000 new acres of Wilderness in the Gorge. Margo has also submitted extensive written and oral testimony in opposition to the proposed off-reservation Gorge casino.
Bev Hedin
Bev has been involved with the outdoors “forever.” Her family used to camp or hike every weekend when they first moved to Oregon as a way to learn about the beautiful Northwest. Later, living in Southern California, she became involved with the Sierra Club, leading hikes, biking trips, backpacking trips, car camps, ski trips, and she even co-led a National Backpack trip in the Sierras. Her love of the outdoors led her to return to the Northwest in 2006, settling in Camas. The view from her home is east into the Columbia Gorge, and she quickly learned about and joined Friends. Today she volunteers as a Friends Hike Shepherd in this region she’s fallen in love with all over again. Photography and wildflowers are special interest of hers.
Patricia Herkert
Patricia has been a member of friends for five years, a shepherd for two. She has hiked most of the trails in the Gorge and loves the outdoors. Patricia’s father was a hike leader for the Adirondack Trails, and growing up in upstate New York, she and her three brothers hiked and camped in the White Mountains, Sherbourne Pass in Vermont, and many more. Patricia and her husband have been married 37 years, have a daughter, son-in-law, and a young granddaughter.
Steve Hocker
Steve is a 20-year Oregon resident, backpacker, kayaker, runner, tennis
player and Assistant Scout Master with the Boy Scouts of America. Steve
loves the Gorge and feels strongly about protecting it from commercial
development.
Adrienne and Robert Lockett
Adrienne and Robert are birders, heavily involved with Audubon Society
of Portland as field trip leaders, and Adrienne has served on their
board of directors. They have co-led Audubon/Friends birding and hiking
trips in the Gorge. They are currently serving in the U.S. Peace Corps
in Jamaica (Robins Bay, St. Mary Parish), and will be back to lead hikes
in 2011.
Brenda and John Morris
Brenda and John Morris moved to Portland from Alexandria, VA in 2003
after over 30 years in New England and Virginia. They have hiked
extensively along the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania, Connecticut,
New Hampshire, and Maine, the White and Green mountains, and have a
special affection for the Presidential Range in New Hampshire. They are
continuing their love for the outdoors in the Pacific Northwest and
especially the Gorge, which they visit frequently. John volunteers as a
Friends Hike Leader, and both serve as Hike Shepherds.
Marianne Nelson
Marianne Nelson moved to Portland in the fall of 2006 after retiring as Executive Director of a small land trust in Illinois. Because she knew of the land conservation efforts of Friends of the Columbia Gorge, she joined and soon volunteered. Marianne was trained as a Friends Hike Shepherd in 2007 and has been helping lead Gorge hikes ever since. Marianne’s husband is a nature photographer, so she has a special interest in hikes where hikers can take time to really look at the wildflowers and other items of interest. Marianne was named Friends' Volunteer of the Year 2009.
Scott Parker
Scott has been hiking the Columbia Gorge for decades. After climbing every mountain and hiking every maintained trail in the Gorge, Scott went on a Friends' hike led by the late Roy Stout, on which he was introduced to the off-trail routes in newly public land on the Washington side. Since then he has been working to open and maintain public access to great scenic places like Cape Horn. There are still places in the Gorge where Scott hasn't been, but there are fewer every year. Scott and his wife, Ellen, have been hiking off-trail for almost 20 years, starting when they got lost on Cascade Head and actually enjoyed it. Since then Scott has become skilled with maps and GPS so they don't get lost much anymore. He has maps and GPS tracks from more than 100 different trails and off-trail routes in the Pacific Northwest, the U.S., and Europe. If he keeps up with his homework he'll have a Certificate in Geographic Information Systems from Portland State at the end of this term.
Scott is a “Transit-to-Trail” pioneer. For the last couple of years, Scott has been using Skamania Transit to hike in the Cape Horn area. He's ridden the Skamania bus dozens of times to and from trailheads, in all seasons of the year.
For more information on Scott's transit-to-trail hikes, including maps and distance charts, visit: http://www.scottadventure.com/Cape_Horn/capehorn.html.
Delores Porch
Delores was born in Chicago and came to Oregon after she graduated college in 1971. Delores had heard that Oregon was “God's country” and when she first drove through the Gorge she knew why. It became a special place for her, and she wants future generations to experience something special too. Delores has a BS in Science Education and studied Wildlife Science for two years. She has volunteered for several animal and environmental organizations over the years. Today she also volunteers with the Columbia Gorge Refuge Stewards and the City of Gresham (Bird Surveys). This is her fourth year volunteering with Friends as a Hike Leader and Shepherd, but she also helps on litter pick-ups, outreach, the Clausen Outdoor Education Program, and writes letters to newspapers and government officials.
Aubrey Russell
Aubrey has been hiking in the Gorge for longer than he can remember! Now he has come full circle and carried his own sleeping children in backpacks over the same trails that he was once carried over. Some of his earliest memories: Wandering off-trail on Hamilton Mountain and getting much too close to the cliffs; hiking Eagle Creek with his parents holding him by a rope (leash-like!) around the waist; sliding down the fabulous dunes that were just east of The Dalles and have now been covered by ODOT to prevent their drifting onto I-84. His favorite hikes today were not open to the public just 10 years ago – evidence of how the National Scenic Area Act has changed the Gorge for the better! The son of Friends’ founder Nancy Russell, Aubrey also serves Friends' board, and on the board of the Friends of the Columbia Gorge Land Trust.
Steven Woolpert
A Gorge resident, Steven started hiking and backpacking as a Boy Scout growing up in Kansas. He progressed to the “big time” when he moved to Arizona in the 1970’s, exploring the Grand Canyon and other desert/canyon destinations, as well as taking a trhee-week raft trip down the Colorado River. After moving to Portland 30 years ago, Steven began hiking the region and was enthralled by the Columbia Gorge. Steven developed his own hiking system to explore the many National Scenic Area trails for their wildflowers, waterfalls and vistas. Steven has been a Friends member as well as Sierra Club, Columbia Riverkeeper and Oregon Natural Desert Association (ONDA) for many years. He now lives in the Gorge outside Lyle, WA, and appreciating the drier geology, flora and fauna, and history. He enjoys sharing outdoor experiences and learning about all aspects of nature, including how humans can live in sustainable ways and conserve the natural resources we have been blessed with for future generations.
