THE OUTING CLUB REORGANIZES
THE OUTDOOR LIFE of the College obviously starts from its founding when Eleazar Wheelock pushed up into the North Country from •Connecticut to find a place suitable to teach the Indians the fundamentals of a civilized life. No doubt he loved these hills and valleys and realized when he reached Hanover Plain that here was a site which Nature had provided for a great institution.
Following in Eleazar's trail was John Ledyard who made the first canoe trip from Hanover to the sea and became one of the great adventurers of the country. Then Richard Hovey came as an undergraduate and down through the years his poems have thrilled Dartmouth men. They have felt the hill winds of which Hovey sings, and have known the deep significance of "the granite of New Hampshire." All of Dartmouth's early history and its subsequent traditions are centered around the rivers and the hills and valleys of this North Country.
The Dartmouth Outing Club was founded in 1909 and is nearly twenty-seven years old today. If we could go back to those early days we would realize how much courage, persistence, and genuine enthusiasm was behind that early movement. life in Hanover during the winter was tolerated but not enjoyed. The campus looked askance at these nuts who persisted in putting on skiis and snowshoes and wandering off to the mountains week-end after week-end. That wasn't a normal thing to do in those days. That feeling persisted for many years but Fred Harris '11 and his cohorts persevered in their plans, interested faculty members, and finally developed an organization which was not large but made up for numbers in its enthusiasm and vigor. I hen old Johnny Johnson '66 came along with his inherent love of the New Hampshire hills and his feeling that a life of genuine spirituality was closely linked up with a healthy outdoor life. He was considered eccentric but he turned much of his modest fortune over to the Outing Club, helped select sites and build cabins until a really imposing organization had been created.
Skipping many years which were full of drama and new discoveries, with a steady healthy growth, we find ourselves at the opening of this College year evaluating what has been done. The vogue of winter sports has swept the continent of Europe. Thousands upon thousands leave the railroad stations in Germany, France, and Italy to spend a week-end in the Alps. The girl or boy who cannot ski passably well is just out of the social swim. The movement is already underway in this country, especially here in New England where the facilities are superior to almost any other section in the country.
DARTMOUTH FINDS ITSELF the leader in this great movement and throughout the towns and cities of the east are Dartmouth boys who learned how to ski at Hanover and who are the backbone of club after club organized to promote a healthy outdoor life in their community. The inventory of skiis in Hanover itself is very nearly 2,000 and the territory covered by students ranges from the summit of Mount Washington down to the Woodstock Valley. Is it any wonder that this rapid growth threatened to submerge the undergraduate Outing Club? By just natural development project after project has been added, involving problems of management, of finance, and of correlation. Let us briefly catalogue them.
First, the traditional Outing Club with eighteen cabins and approximately two thousand acres of land; the ski jump which attracts an audience of more than five thousand at winter carnival; Occom Pond which furnishes skating to the whole Hanover community throughout the winter; the Outing Club House affording its generous and substantial hospitality to the residents of Hanover and visiting alumni; Winter Carnival, the greatest winter outdoor event in the country, involving problems of management and promotion which absorb the entire efforts of the Outing Club for week after week and which yields a revenue that helps carry activities for the entire year. Then along came the swimming pond built by the Hanover Improvement Society, patronized somewhat by the students in the spring, and the source of delight to all children and many adults of Hanover throughout the summer. Then the ski tow which is being built near Balch Hill which will open that whole domain to ski enthusiasts throughout the season of the winter's snow.
WORK IS AT AN advanced stage in the clearing of Oak Hill (known as Mel Adams' Hill) as the site of this ski tow which is the first of a series of three that are projected. A marvelous expanse of skiing terrain of great variety and considerable elevation has been opened. There are plans eventually for a ski tow on Balch Hill and another one near Velvet Rocks on the hill south of Balch, together with a series of interlocking trails. When this project is completed it will be possible for a skier to cover several miles of almost continuous downhill trails. It is possible that the Balch tow also will be completed for use this winter. The tows are expected to produce enough income to pay for the cost of construction and operation, which is covered by an advance made by the Trustees.
The Oak Hill location was chosen as offering some of the best skiing terrain around Hanover. There was additional interest in this choice, however, in view of the developments of the Hanover Improvement Society around the area of the artificial pond which, incidentally, has been named Storrs' Pond in honor of the prominence of the Storrs name since the earliest days of Hanover and the College in connection with public-spirited enterprises of all sorts. Although saturation was such that the pond was not useful during a greater part of the past summer, there are plans for recreational developments in that area for the future and there is a possibility of adapting such buildings as may be constructed there for winter use by skiers as well as summer use by swimmers, and it has been suggested that the Hanover Improvement Society might turn the operation of the pond over to such an organization as the new Outing Club.
There are possibilities of the development of the 27,000 acres of wilderness in the Second College Grant for hunting and fishing by alumni and undergraduates under the auspices of the Outing Club. Then last but not least, is Moosilauke with its Summit house managed and operated by students for nearly fifteen years—a gift of the Woodworths. It entertains nearly two thousand guests every summer. Then, at the foot of the same mountain, is the Ravine Camp of the Moosilauke development with Hell's Highway running down over the sheer face of the mountain and connecting the two houses, with trails running up into the Ravine and across the mountain affording facilities for skiing second only to Tuckerman's Ravine in grandeur, duration of snow, and extent of area; a gold mine in floral, geological, and biological resources; a haven of rest for those who are tired and worn by the life of the great city; Dartmouth's own mountain standing ready to supply year-round recreations.
WITH THIS avalanche of important propositions before them the undergraduate Outing Club asked the President of the College for aid. The result was the formation of a supercouncil or board of directors appointed by the President with the authority of the Trustees to take care of these outside projects which need attention during the entire calendar year and which handicapped the undergraduates in their natural and proper sphere of activity. A study of the place of the Outing Club in the social life of the College, which was made last spring by the Committee for the Survey of Social Life in the College, aided in the crystallization of the feeling that a more adequate organization should be set up for the management and further development of Dartmouth's far-flung out-of-doors empire. The conclusions of this committee were influential in determining the lines along which the new organization should be built up.
In recent years, in addition to its regular program of memberships and instruction, cabins, trails, and forestry, trips, fish and game activities, Winter Carnival, etc., there have been added to D. O. C. responsibilities the Outing Club House, the Moosilauke Summit Camp, and cooperation in the management and promotion of the Moosilauke Ravine Camp, the Occom Pond Association, the Alumni Carnival, and the activities of such alumni groups as the Dartmouth Outing Club of Boston. Such diverse enterprises as these and many others will become the responsibility of the Board of Governors, which, while being an operating body, also is analagous to a "holding company."
THE FOLLOWING IS a sketch of the organization which has been developed for the new and enlarged D. O. C. after many months of conference and study:
CHARLES PROCTOR 'oo, the new chairman, has long been an outstanding figure not only in winter sports at Dartmouth but throughout the United States. He has held almost every position in activities of the undergraduate club and was, for many years, chairman of the executive committee of the Intercollegiate Winter Sports Union and its successor organization, the Intercollegiate Ski Union. He was a prime mover in organizing the U. S. Eastern A. Ski A. and has been a director of that program for many years and a chairman of its most important committee. He is recognized as one of the best ski jumping judges in the country. Professor Proctor was chairman of the 1932 American Olympic Ski Games Committee and is a member of a similar committee for 1936. In short, he is a prime mover in organized ski activities at Dartmouth and recognized as one of its leaders throughout the country. He is surrounded by a board of unusual ability.
DANIEL P. HATCH JR. '28 is the director and a member of the board. He is the man who has handled the affairs of the undergraduate Outing Club for many years and has been the originator and promoter of many of its most important developments. He is thoroughly versed in outing club problems and has a vision of the future which comes from a practical knowledge of what has been done in the past and what can be done in years to come.
BILL NISS '36, president of the undergraduate Outing Club, brings his four-years' experience to the councils of the board, and together with DICK GODDARD '20, faculty member of the D. O. C. Council, constitutes the connecting link between undergraduates and the faculty.
MAX NORTON '19, the treasurer, is known as a hard working, painstaking manager of affairs, second to none in Hanover in ability. ARCH GILE '17 represents the town and community linking local knowledge with a lifetime of interest in Hanover and College affairs. TOM DENT is the coach of soccer and lacrosse and, in addition, a member of the New Hampshire State Fish and Game Commission. His special interest will be the development of conservation. His knowledge is second to none in the state. JOHN R. MCLANE '07 is the Trustee member of the organization. His generous contributions to Moosilauke and other projects and his interest in the outdoor life of New Hampshire makes him an outstanding member of any organization of this sort. Of HALSEY EDGERTON '06, treasurer of the College, no tribute is needed here. His fine judgment and his great interest in the proper expansion of the plant of the College make him always conspicuous in any effort which has to do with increasing the beauty of the town of Hanover, and its practical facilities for rest, recreation and enjoyment.
LANDON G. ROCKWELL '35 has been appointed by President Hopkins as Graduate Manager of the Outing Club Council, succeeding to the responsibilities with the undergraduate Outing Club formerly performed by Mr. Hatch. Rockwell was chairman of last year's Outing Club Council. It is evident that all of these manifold outdoor interests are now managed, correlated, and promoted by an intelligent and compact organization of long experience and proven ability.
The entire development is a logical one in the process of uninterrupted growth which has been the Outing Club's history since its foundation in 1909. It is unique in its field and is one feature of college life which is almost exclusively Dartmouth's. Its development of winter sports in New England has redounded richly to the fame of the College, and the completion of the new organization simply represents the belief of the College that its further growth and future importance are unlimited, not alone in skiing but in all outdoor recreation.
We can see in the years to come greater alumni participation, perhaps a network of Outing Clubs already started and growing fast in those communities where Dartmouth graduates reside; a swarming back to Hanover during the whole winter time for the sports which we have both here and throughout the whole country-side. Perhaps, in the years to come, we shall push up to the Dartmouth Grant, that marvelous undeveloped area where there is unlimited opportunity for hunting and fishing, for tramping, and camping, a reservation unrivalled in its possibilities and its natural resources. Much needs to be done but as years go by our thoughts will constantly turn North.
The situation has been referred to previously in this article of the difficulties in which those who were guiding and directing Outing Club affairs found themselves owing to the multitude of large and small jobs that came to the D. O. C. Supposedly interested only in undergraduate outdoor recreation of a rather specialized sort, the Outing Club gradually found itself operating a public clubhouse, skating rinks, half a mountain up at Moosilauke, an Alumni Carnival and a Childrens' Carnival, ski schools, and other things. In addition the success of the Dartmouth Alumni Outing Club of Boston clearly shows that alumni interest in keeping in touch with outdoor things in Hanover may become quite active and alive in the future. The new organization recognizes that the D. O. C. has progressed from its first stages of growth into a more mature state where the many and varied year-around interests of undergraduate, alumni, and residents of and visitors to the community can be coordinated through one organization.
IT is VERY EASY to indulge in superlatives in trying to describe this outdoor picture of the College. To those who have not come back in the winter time when the whole student body appears to be out on the hills every afternoon it sounds overdrawn, but we must reach the conclusion that we are linked with a world-wide movement. All that we have done in years past bids fair to be of unestimable advantage to us in years to come. By location, by training, and by a fortunate chain of circumstances we are the leaders in this great movement. Sons of the College can leave Hanover with a real love of Nature which is granted to few. They will carry it through life and they will come back year after year feeling how great a heritage has been given to them.
It is fitting, therefore, that we conclude this article with a quotation from a recent address by President Hopkins: "Likewise, I would insist that the man whospends four years in our North Country here and doesnot learn to hear the melody of rustling leaves anddqes not learn to love the wash of the racing brooksover their rocky beds in spring, who never experiencesthe repose to be found on lakes and river, who has notstood enthralled upon the top of Moosilauke on amoonlight night or has not become a worshipper ofcolor as he has seen the sunset from one of Hanover'shills, who has not thrilled at the whiteness of the snow-clad countryside in winter or at the flaming forest colorsof the fall,—l would insist that this man has not reachedout for some of the most worth-while educational values available to him at Dartmouth."
A Chart Showing the Interrelation of Alumni, Undergraduate, and Community Outdoor Interests
Intercollegiate Skiing Provides Keen Com,petition and Thrills Under the revised set-up, which gives the Dartmouth Outing Club a much enlarged and broadened scope of activity, skiing will be only one of several recreational and competitive sports under D. O. C. direction. This photograph by Levick shows the Green star, Dick Durrance '38, leading Ted Hunter '37, and Selden Hannah '35 in a zooming down-mountain run. Durrance and Hunter, together with warren Chivers '37, are members of the United States.ski team that will compete in the Winter Olympics in Germany, February 6-16. A. L. Washburn '35, a fourth D. O. C. star skier, is an alternate for the U. S. team.
Charles A. Proctor '00 Chairman of the D. O. C. Board of Governors in the new organization announced this fall.
Daniel P. Hatch '28 Director of the varied and inclusive outdoor activities allied with the new Outing Club.
