With the Outing Club
THE greatest single innovation in the D. O. C. program this year is perhaps the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club, organized by Jack Durrance '39 after a summer of climbing in the Tetons. Patterned after the more famous Harvard Mountaineering Club, it is an attempt to organize rock-climbing at Dartmouth, and to supply correct equipment and expert instruction which will tend to minimize the danger in a sport that is hazardous to the inexperienced. Rock-climbing will constitute the chief activity of the club, which will serve as a medium of control and a means of enforcing necessary caution. Although all D. O. C. members are eligible, strict qualifications and tests of ability will restrict the size of the club.
Durrance has already led several trips to the cliffs of Huntington Ravine on Mt. Washington, and has given instruction each afternoon to groups at the Bema, practising on short but difficult pitches in College Park and teaching the technique of using a rope. Official club trips are planned to several of the cliffs within easy driving distance of Hanover, and when snow comes will attempt winter ascents of various New England summits.
Week-end trips, more than any one feature, are the essence of the Outing Club. A bean-hole was prepared at Moose Mountain the first Sunday of the college year, and a meal served to 150 freshmen. Sixty-five D. O. C. members were on trips the following week-end ranging from the Presidentials to the Green Mountains, and the program has been continued with more energy than the club has seen in recent years. An unusually active freshman class has constantly taxed the capacity of available cars, while the D. O. C. has sent parties over the Franconias, to Osceola, into the Sandwich range, and to Carter Dome and the Presidentials.
For some the climax of the fall trips program will be the Intercollegiate Outing sponsored by the D. O. C. at Spy Glass Hill Farm, with more than a hundred tentative registrations from New England college outing clubs.
Weekly meetings to explain equipment and club activities have aroused interest among the freshmen, and the Fish and Game department has held frequent informal discussions on outdoor life. A thousand spruce trees have been planted in the vicinity of D. O. C. cabins this fall. Meanwhile the ski team has been running on the golf course three days each week under the direction of Captain Warren Chivers, supplementing that training with intensive work-outs in the gymnasium.
