III. OUTDOOR LIFE

Along with the movement described above and possibly related to it there has been a greatly increased interest in outdoor life at Dartmouth.

There is no need for us to describe the reorganization of the Outing Club last fall, and the important recent extensions of its already numerous worthy activities. These matters are covered regularly on other pages of the MAGAZINE. We should like to note in this general survey, however, that the Outing Club has taken a significant step forward during the past year and appears to be entering upon a new era of value and importance to the College.

But almost equally significant has been the further breaking up of that old tradition of the sophisticates that love of . the outdoors at college is a little queer.

The late Natt W. Emerson '00, in an article which appeared in this publication last fall, gave the following interesting description of this attitude as it existed in the days when the Outing Club was founded: "Life in Hanover during the winter urns tolerated but not enjoyed. Thecampus looked askance at these nuts whopersisted in putting on skis and snowshoesand wandering off to the mountains weekend after week-end. That wasn't a normalthing to do in those days."

Unfortunately the remnants of this attitude have persisted to this very day among a certain class of Dartmouth men. Each winter the campus is divided into two groups, the ones who hate to see winter end because that means the end of snow and winter sports, and those to whom Hanover becomes a cold, unpleasant, confining little town which one should try and get away from as often as possible. And at other seasons of the year this latter group becomes even less understanding of the out- doors man and his enjoyments.

We are happy to say that this way of thinking has received a considerable setback this year, particularly with regard to the winter season. The great increase in skiing and in the average radius of the skiers' terrain has been commented upon before in this and other columns. An important phase of this development has been the increased interest in week-end trips. Many more men have really penetrated into the woods and gone off on longer trips this year than ever before.

As two concrete illustrations of the present scope of winter sports at Dartmouth we cite the recent College downhill ski championship, sponsored by The Dartmouth, which attracted 220 students, and the record of the winter sports team one week-end in February, when it split into four sections and entered four important New England meets at once, performing creditably in all of them. And aside from all this it was providing the nucleus of the Olympic team in Germany.