HIKERS TO TRACE MINERS' TRAIL : TREK TO SPAN 300 MILES.

Byline: Jim Skeen Daily News Staff Writer

Five Antelope Valley hikers are setting off today to retrace the path taken 147 years ago by impatient forty-niners, who in search of a shortcut to the gold fields, stumbled into the ``jaws of hell'': Death Valley.

Allan Smith, 34, of Palmdale; Jerry Freeman, 54, of Pearblossom; Freeman's daughters Holly, 26, and Jennifer, 24; and Clay Campbell, 30, a cinematographer, plan to cover 300 miles from Utah to Death Valley in a month, documenting any evidence they find of the original forty-niners' trek.

``It's more nervous anticipation we are dealing with right now,'' Smith said before setting out. ``I do have butterflies, but I'm confident in my skills and the skills of my companions.''

The route winds its way from Mount Misery in southwestern Utah over the Utah-Nevada border, through Meadow Valley near the town of Elgin, Nev., around the Sheep Mountain range into Armagosa Valley, and then into Death Valley. If all goes well, the group will end their adventure on Christmas Eve.

The group will be barred from hiking a portion of the forty-niners' original path that traverses restricted Air Force and Department of Energy land. However, the hikers have arranged to be escorted into Department of Energy lands to look for artifacts and signs of the forty-niners' encampments.

The hikers will spend a day, possibly two, with three archeologists on the Department of Energy land.

Jerry Freeman, a substitute high school teacher who holds a degree in archeology from California State University, Long Beach, said he expects they will find wood and iron artifacts preserved by the dry desert climate.

``They are not going to weather for hundreds of years,'' Freeman said.

One of the goals of the expedition is to bring recognition to the women who made the 1849 journey, including Juliet Brier.

``Juliet Brier was the first woman ever to see Death Valley. She was the first woman to ever traverse Death Valley - on foot, mind you, while tending to her children,'' Freeman said.

Brier is buried in an unmarked grave in Lodi, but there is now interest in erecting a monument to her, Freeman said.

Freeman's daughters are honoring the spirit of the forty-niner women on the trek. Jennifer, a drill team adviser for Highland High School, is representing Brier. Holly, a sheet metal worker, is honoring Sarah Bennett and Abagail Arcan, who was pregnant during the 1849 trek.

Both women are outdoors enthusiasts. Holly, an equestrian and backpacker, has climbed peaks in the Sierras, Panamints and Superstition Mountains. Jennifer has climbed Mount Whitney four times, traversed Alaskan glaciers and scaled Yosemite's Half Dome.

``Being in the outdoors for me is like Disneyland,'' Jennifer said. ``I eat it up.''

The idea for the trek sprang from a 1989 expedition Freeman took with Antelope Valley photojournalist Lee Bergthold from Badwater, Death Valley, the lowest point in the United States at 282 feet below sea level, to Mount Whitney, the highest point in the continental United States at 14,492 feet.

While searching for another challenge, Freeman became fascinated with the story of the forty-niners.

Bergthold was planning to join Freeman in retracing the forty-niners' steps, but dropped out over concerns about access to the restricted federal lands. Bergthold is planning a 300-plus-mile trek of his own in December when he will travel from Battle Mountain, Nev., to Death Valley.

The Freeman-Smith trek will retrace the steps of Gold Rush miners who split off from a wagon train taking a southerly route from Utah into California. The forty-niners, anxious to get to the gold fields in Northern California, had seen a map showing a western route.

The leader of the wagon train, Capt. Jefferson Hunt, told them, ``You will be going into the jaws of hell'' if they attempted the route. Most of the wagon train broke off and went west, only to return to Hunt after finding their path blocked by a narrow canyon.

Two groups pressed on in search of a western route - 30 men from Illinois who were joined by Brier's family, and the Bennett-Arcane party, composed of 13 men, two women and four children.

Although the two parties traveled separately, they frequently encountered each other and ended up entering Death Valley at the same place near Furnace Creek.

In researching the trek, Freeman located evidence of the forty-niners, including a wagon wheel and an inscription on a rock dated Nov. 10, 1849.

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Photo: (ran in SAC and AV editions--color in AV) Jerry Freeman, left, of Pearblossom, his daughter Jennifer and Allan Smith review maps of the route they will take from Mount Misery in Utah to Death Valley.

Hans Gutknecht/Daily News