Editor’s note: Our beloved Al Sladek was honored by so many friends and hike participants at a March event, showing appreciation for his amazing feat (feet?) of leading Sierra Club hikes for 50 years. But before that, in 2018, he was honored by the Santa Barbara Independent as a Local Hero. Here is the Indy’s write up:
Al Sladek
Trail Leader
Al Sladek shows up. Every Friday at 6 pm he steps to the edge of the fountain in front of Santa Barbara Mission to make an announcement. The gathering crowd may be small or large, the weather hot or cold, or somewhere in between. Doesn’t matter if it’s raining or if darkness has already arrived, as it does this time of year.
It’s time to hike, and Sladek is calling out this week’s trail, as he has done steadily for the past 44 years, ever since starting this Friday-night offshoot of the Sierra Club’s popular Wednesday-night hikes.
By 6:15 p.m., Sladek — an avid jogger who routinely puts in 25 miles weekly — has encouraged hikers to carpool to the trailhead and hike at their own pace, paired up or in small groups of friends or strangers. “The important thing,” he said, “is that everybody has somebody to hike with.” And if somebody needs a flashlight, he may have an extra. Sorry, no dogs and no smoking.
Westward on the front county, Arroyo Burro Trail may host the night’s hike. Sometimes it’s Romero Canyon. Often, it’s a popular route in between; he has a handful of favorites. “We head up about an hour and a half and turn around,” said the 76-year-old, who ventured from home at 15, served in Vietnam, got an engineering degree from UC Berkeley, and eventually landed at Delco in Goleta.
Coming down the mountain, everybody’s encouraged to regroup for pizza downtown and, once a month, back to the Valle Verde senior-living community — where Sladek has lived for the past five years — for a potluck and slideshow.
“I just enjoy hiking and meeting hiking people,” he said. “It’s just a fun thing to do.”