That Silver Wedding Carnival
THAT SILVER JUBILEE Carnival, just passed, which marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the day when Dartmouth married the snow was quite the most glorious, hectic, brilliant, maddest Carnival of any of its brethren. Hyperbole in speech was quite in order, the quality of snow statues, the size of crowds, the success of outdoor evening, the beauty of the queen and her court, the excitement of the skiteam battles and the record hung up in skating, the interest in the other athletic contests, the enthusiasm of visitors, the length of stories and the multitude of pictures in the metropolitan newspapers. Best of all, though roads were slippery and driving not the slowest, no untoward happening marred the joyousness of nights and days of pleasure.
These twenty-five years of existence have seen the Dartmouth Outing Club perform splendid service not only for the College but for the State. There is plenty of credit for the late loved "Johnny" Johnson, for such early workers as Fred Harris, Carl Shumway, Charles Proctor, and Rolfe Syvertsen, and many others, and in addition for the splendidly organized boards of students that have caTrried on these carnivals and have made each one better than the one that went before. The addition of this part of the program, the elimination of. that, all were due to the carnival committees that sat and deliberated and argued from month to month before each occasion. And for credit both in the student work and for service as director there is plenty for Dan Hatch '28.
Those old pictures of the Outing Club seem so curious today even to men who were in them. And the pictures of the old groups that went around on snowshoes fifty or more years ago are today simply screaming. It is perhaps taking away no credit from the men who have made the Outing Club a success to state that the College, from the very beginning, had been preparing for some such organization, that the very Indian scouts, who on snowshoes during the Revolution went over the trails from Hanover to St. Francis, or guided American Armies in the campaigns about Lake Champlain, were forerunners of the Outing Club idea. Skis came in in the nineties (if such a broad statement may be made without arousing controversy), and were quite largely used, though in primitive form, in the early nineteen hundreds.
But from the very beginning the now country-wide idea o£ the winter carnival and winter sports in general came out of Hanover. Other colleges sent observers here, and in a few years other carnivals were in full swing. At the present time, writers on the subject go much farther and say that the introduction of the ski as part of American sport originated at Dartmouth. And the presence of Governor Bridges at the Silver Anniversary Carnival was really a testimonial on the part of the State to the importance of the Dartmouth Outing Club in helping to popularize New Hampshire as an Alpine resort. The thousands of people that come in winter to try its trails, the special trains bringing crowds over the week-ends, and the sudden importance of mountain resorts in cold weather all bear witness to the fact that a large proportion of the State's investment, both private and public, is in recreational facilities.
"Come and Get It!" Noon hour at the Ravine Camp, Dartmouth-at-Moosilauke, where skiers with ravenous appetites eat, sleep, and ski to their hearts' content.
