The premise of ShowMe Hikes is that you donāt need to travel to Colorado or Utah to feel the hum of the earth. You can feel it in Missouriās backcountry. You just need knowledge.
āThe St. Francois Mountains [in Iron County]āthose were volcanoes,ā says the groupās 38-year-old co-founder, Mike Roth of South City. āWhen weāre down there and I say that to people, their eyes get wide.ā
Roth has been leading groups of hikers into the Missouri outdoors since 2023, free of charge. Some crave the context that he shares aloud, whether itās about the shagbark hickory trees or frost flowers. (Roth, who works in financial technology, likes to burrow deep into academic journals and government publications to create a knowledge base before leading any trip.) Other participants crave connection with their fellow hikers. The group attracts a lot of transplants to St. Louis, but overall, the diversity of ages, ethnicities, and places of residence has been ācrazy,ā Roth says.
Roth grew up hiking with his dad, the late John Roth, who founded the Ozark Trail Association and died in a tractor accident on the familyās farm in 2009. For the next decade or so, Mike Roth went on a handful of hikes a year, he says, but in 2021, his job became āincredibly stressful.ā To stay sane, he went out trekking almost every weekend. Rothāwho used to shoot videos pro bono for local hip-hop artistsāposted online some of his hiking photos, which prompted the frequent question: Where is this? That lack of awareness, combined with a dearth of local hiking organizations, led Roth and his fiancĆ©e, Jessie Donovan, to launch ShowMe Hikes.
They organize four group hikes per shoulder season. Each hike in a season is progressively longer and farther away from St. Louis than the previous. All are day hikes, not overnight, and they begin at 10:30 a.m. on Saturdays. Itās grown-ups only, and pets must stay home. Smartphones are put on silent. Everyone handles their own transportation, snacks, and hydration. The shortest hike of the season stops at about three miles; the longest, around eight miles. ShowMe has never done the same trail twice, but each has āsome sort of vista or Instagrammable moment,ā Roth says. āEspecially for new hikers, I want to leave them with a memory.ā
Itās fair to wonder how present in nature one could feel as part of a big group, but Roth clarifies that the groups arenāt big. They typically hover around 10. ShowMe has had about 50ā60 unique participants, Roth says, because some have shown up for more than one trip. The majority discovered the group through Instagram or Facebook.
Rothās hopes for 2025āputting aside his pending nuptials and a side project to develop a card gameāinclude forging partnerships between ShowMe Hikes and other organizations. He has also considered planning an overnight trip. Sooner or later, he says, heāll become more involved with the entity his father created, the OTA. āI wanted time to pass,ā he says. āYour dad dies in an accidentāyou need time to process that. But itās important to me to continue the work that my dad did.ā
For now, heās blazing his own path with ShowMe Hikes. Missouri does not have many epic landforms that make the beholder feel small, and thatās what a lot of people want, Roth observes. But Missouri, he insists, is āso rich in natural history and human history. Once you have that, you look at land a different way. Iām trying to change the narrative.ā
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