It’s 10 a.m. on a Monday morning in January. I meet Dru White at the Living Room Trail in the foothills above Salt Lake City. Haze surrounds the valley like a bathtub ring, but there’s nothing but blue sky above. The weather app on my phone reads 30 degrees.
He’s dressed in black: Salomon Speedcross trail shoes, Nike shorts over leggings, Nike three-quarter zip, neck gaiter, Nike hat. White hair peeks out from under the cap. His smile is broad as we shake hands. This is hike No. 1,807 on the Wasatch Front since he started counting in 2012. He’s done this trail more than 120 times. Why it’s named the Living Room will become obvious later.
But to get there, we have to traverse a mountain formation that has come to be known as the dragon among some older hikers who frequent the area. White turned the notion into a fantasy book — “The Path of the Dragon Walker” — as part of a self-help program to get people off the couch and into the mountains. “Technology has twisted people in a lot of ways that isn’t healthy,” he says. “Going out in nature can help.”
We head off up a steep little pitch into what he calls the fangs. Deseret News photographer Kristin Murphy and I are about to become dragon walkers. White is the OG.
Minimalist hiking
A soon-to-be 74-year-old former owner of a health and fitness company, White was a regular hiker for decades. But his hikes really ramped up after he retired at age 60. He hikes nearly every day now.
“I just really love and relate to the setting in nature and in the outdoors. That makes me just feel good going out there and being there,” he says. “Sometimes you get in a little bit of a funk, especially as you get older you start to have these existential mini crises. When you go out on the trail . . . the further you go, the longer you’re out there, little by little, it’s almost incremental, you just start to feel better.”
Distances vary but White’s hikes average about 4.5 miles. He’s a minimalist hiker, meaning he doesn’t carry anything — no backpack, no hiking poles, not even a water bottle, except for on hot days. He says outdoor retailers have done a great job of selling people on “you better take — these pick your number — 19 essentials" for hiking. It either has people scared to go out or feeling a need to be trendy.
“I really focus on the minimalist experience because most people, especially if they don’t go out very much or they’ve never been out, the only way they’re going to come back and start doing it regularly is if it’s pleasant,” he says. “People don’t get it, but every ounce you carry is going to make a difference on the experience you have.”
White says 99.9% of hikers will be fine if they follow three simple rules: Know your ability, know the trail, know the weather. The first is somewhat subjective but there’s plenty of information available about the other two.
He records every footstep on Garmin Connect, a mobile app that tracks, analyzes and shares fitness activities. He downloads it to a spreadsheet on his website. From his first recorded hike to the Avenues Twin Peaks on Feb. 16, 2012, to the day spent with us, here’s what his cumulative stats look like:
- Hikes: 1,807
- Trail miles: 8,223.96
- Ascent: 3,152,237 feet
- Hours: 4,930:50:24
- Calories: 1,384,177
Over more than 60 years on Utah trails, he noticed that like fishermen, some hikers’ stories about their exploits seemed to grow taller with time. He didn’t want anyone to question his hikes, so he started recording them when GPS became widely available.
White’s eating habits are minimalist, too: A light breakfast and one meal a day. He takes no medications or supplements, never visits the doctor and never gets ill, except for maybe the sniffles. “People say, ‘Don’t you get sick?’ I said yeah, ‘I did once.’”
In the Living Room
The three of us continue up a steep grade over the dragon’s snout to its head, where we stop near two mountain mahogany trees that White says form the dragon’s ears. We take in the view of the expansive valley. The white-capped Oquirrh Mountains to the west appear as ghost peaks above the brown haze.
“Good job, you guys. You’re pretty amazing zipping up here like nothing. You’re good hikers,” he tells us.
White is all about positivity when it comes to hiking. “Look at that pro hiker,” he frequently says to people he encounters on the trail. Of course, it stops them in their tracks and a conversation ensues. He’s met people from all over the world that way, which he logs in his hiking notes. He’s familiar with all the locals, too. There aren’t many other hikers on this cold January day, but he knows the two we encounter.
He knows all the critters, too. He points out rattlesnake dens, coyote hideouts and deer and elk trails. He spotted a mountain lion a few months back.
We trek along the dragon’s neck, the spikes formed by red, gold and tan nugget sandstone. Early Utah pioneers quarried rock from the canyon to build homes and foundations, leaving various shapes and sizes of hewn stone behind.
The Living Room got its name because hikers over the years used the smooth rocks to make Flintstones-style tables, chairs and a “television” with a prehistoric-looking remote. But much of the room is a shambles. White laments that clues for modern-day treasure hunts sent people scurrying to the mountain where they overturned the furniture in search of the booty.
Further up the trail there’s an upper chamber, an attic and throne room where a large stone chair behind a carefully and beautifully stacked stone wall awaits hikers to sit as king or queen of the mountain for a moment. White sees it as the heart of the dragon.
The rocky ground at the upper chamber — four stone chairs behind a stacked rock wall — is littered with rusty nails, apparently remnants of the wooden apparatus erected for the long-gone quarries. Hikers started to gather and deposit them in a stone box in the chamber. Somewhere along the way, lore holds that the nails are lucky and placing one in the box will make you beautiful, rich and healthy.
We each leave a nail.
Finding yourself
While hiking won’t make you beautiful or rich, White testifies that it makes you healthy and happy. He has mentored people who were depressed or otherwise troubled but changed dramatically after regularly taking to a trail. He says that’s very rewarding and part of his motivation for hiking.
White’s miles in the mountains have yielded two books, “Hiking for Life” and the aforementioned “The Path of the Dragon Walker.” They’re meant for people to enjoy what he has come to enjoy.
“I think if you come out here, you unplug from a lot of the chaos that’s going on. It gives you a chance to sort of reset your mind. But I don’t know that there’s one single benefit. It’s a whole array of benefits,” he says.
As we pause atop a high point overlooking the valley before making the descent to the trailhead, I ask White what he thinks about while trekking through the mountains.
“Can I make it up that muddy slope?” he says with a laugh before allowing, “All kinds of things.”
“I don’t know that there’s really a profound thought process that goes into it. I believe that due to the vast number of generations of human beings becoming what they are today that there’s a part of us, somewhere inside here, (tapping his chest) that used to live this way, and that we kind of intuitively sense that,” he says.
“And when you go out and you unplug a little bit, there’s something going on there that you go, ‘This feels kind of like me.’”