A Banner Year for the D. O. C.

"DARTMOUTH OUT-O-DOORS," OUTING CLUB'S ANNUAL PUBLICATION,RE VIE WS AND REPORTS ACTIVITIES

ONE OF THE handsomest and most interesting publications that has come out of Hanover is Dartmouth Out-O-Doors,distributed last month to some 3,000 persons on the regular mailing list for the annual magazine. There are copies available, free of charge, for others who apply to the Outing Club. Striking illustrations and very readable text distinguish this 1937 number in a series that has always maintained a high standard.

The current issue carries a tribute to the work of Daniel P. Hatch Jr. '2B who for eight years has been general manager of the D.O.C. He left Hanover during the summer to enter upon a business career. His successor is J. Willcox Brown '37 of Montchanin, Del., who was president of the Outing Club last year. Another major change in personnel is announced in the magazine—that of the resignation of John H. Feth '34 as assistant manager of the club and the engagement of a Maine guide, Ross McKenney, as woodsman-technician.

HIGH PRAISE FOR MR. HATCH

The success of the Outing Club's program has often been credited, in major degree, to the directing and guiding genius of the retiring general manager, Mr. Hatch. More than any other undergraduate organization the D. O. C. has relied upon student initiative and direction and hard work to put over its many and varied activities. Even during the recent period of expansion of the scope of its work, as a leader in the tremendous nation-wide boom in winter sports, the club was marked by strong undergraduate leadership. Behind the scenes there was always the guiding and capable hand of an experienced manager at work. Prof. Charles A. Proctor 'OO, chairman of the trustees of the Outing Club, contributes this comment (reprinted from Dartmouth Out-O-Doors) on Dan Hatch:

"This year marks the close of an eightyear period which might be called the 'Dan Hatch era' of the Outing Club. In the fall of nineteen twenty-nine, Dan was persuaded that he would be happier here in Hanover acting as father confessor to the Outing Club, to which he had devoted so large a part of his inexhaustible undergraduate life, than in studying history at Columbia. As he leaves us now, under the impulse to wider or more competitive fields of endeavor, he can look back on a job well done. And indeed no one but Dan himself or one who has observed closely his work and the development of the Club through these years, can appreciate all that means. As controller of the purse strings which will stretch all too short a distance, much tact is demanded in dealing each year with a new and enthusiastic group of undergraduate Directors of the Club. Keeping happy a horde of athletes, guests, and more or less hard-boiled newspaper men in the wild congestion of Hanover at Carnival-time, may well produce grey hairs in profusion.

"Superimpose on these a multitude of other activities such as supervising the D.O.C. House, keeping ice cleared on Occom Pond, building and running a skitram, assuming a position of leadership in the affairs of the Ski Association, giving birth to the Jobildunk Ravine development, and constant and constructive thought for the development of the Club, that it may be of maximum service to the College, and you have a picture which leaves no doubt that Dan's years in Hanover have left him little time for boredom. All these things and many more he has done, and done well, preserving his genial smile and his constant concern for the comfort and happiness of others through it all. Is it any wonder that we shall miss him or that we have every confidence that he will be successful in his new work?"

Editorial comments in the review of the year's activities are titled "Smoke Talk." Although it is not possible to reprint any considerable portion of the reading matter in Dartmouth Out-O-Doors several abstracts of comments in "Smoke Talk" follow.

PLACED END TO END

The problem of Uncle Sam's fabulous and embarrassing gold accumulation at Fort Knox is but a small counterpart of the baffling difficulties which now face the Dartmouth Outing Club as result of the apparent determination of the Ski Team to corner America's silver resources. The U. S. National Downhill title, the U. S. National Slalom, the U. S. National Cross Country, the U. S. National Combined, the Eastern Downhill, the Eastern Slalom, the Canadian National Crosscountry, together with collegiate and club event titles too numerous to catalogue—and each title accompanied by silverware appropriate and otherwise —have been gathered up by Dartmouth's 1937 Ski Team. And now they are making forays into Chile, New Zealand and Australia! No ski team on this continent has ever gathered up titles with such complete indifference to the limits of trophy storage.

Tire situation has afforded opportunity for all sorts of calculations. One mathematician has it that there is an adequate supply to silver-leaf the ski jump; another that the white walls of Dartmouth Hall might be completely faced in silver, the better to gleam in September's late afternoon sun; another that if all the medals and trophies were placed end to end they would reach from the summit of Moosilauke to the Waumbec Tank on the Mt. Washington Cog Railway.

The editor has still another solution. Based on considerable observation and calculation, it is his earnest conviction that these trophies, all placed together, reach from a past time of a small group of enthusiastic but not very proficient skiers to a present time of a whole college that skis tolerably well—and beyond. In other words. all Hanover skis much better because of championship ski teams, and that is the justification for their being.

PRINCELY DOMAIN

Dartmouth Out-o'-Doors is a princely domain whose treasure and variety of education and recreation defy estimate, and whose only real limits are the bounds of the vision of each generation of Dartmouth men as they in turn become its proprietors. Twenty-eight winters ago the boundaries were the frosted dormitory windows through which hibernating students exchanged hostile glances with the New Hampshire winter. But one man and a dozen or so enthusiasts then had vision of a college on skis, a college which found friendly, sparkling allies in snow and ice, and as a direct result the winter boundaries of outdoor Dartmouth are now pushed back beyond Hanover's hills to the frosty summits of the White Mountains. Indeed, as articles in this issue will demonstrate, the Canadian Rockies, the Andes of Chile, the Alps of Switzerland now all come within the compass of Dartmouth out-o'doors on skis.

The sweep and surge of country-wide interest in winter sports—in which Dartmouth has played no minor part—is one of the interesting phenomena of our time. Some commentators see in it a fad—another Mah Jong. Others see deeper implications. Ours is a nation of pioneer traditions, and with few new lands to be taken up, "frontiers" almost gone, the struggle of American men and women with their most worthy and stimulating adversary—nature—begins as a recreation rather than a livelihood. The stakes in outdoor recreation are a man's health and a communion with earth from which he may not live too far apart, as opposed to the pioneer's wager of his life, but the implements are traditionally the same—axe, pack, paddle, muscle-pulling labor on a frontier. And there are other factors: increasing leisure for potential use or abuse; the necessity of outdoor living as the only antidote to increasingly urban occupations and routines. These things provide the drive behind the winter sports boom, and their force grows.

The growth of winter sports has been the more dramatic because there is yet but a small spread of winter outdoor recreations and the whole surge has swept down the one adequate available channelskiing. There are a great variety of outdoor summer, spring and fall recreations and the movement therefore has been thus far diffused, less dramatic in these seasons. But the same drive is there, and we have just before us the same sweep and surge of newfound interest for such recreations as hunting, fishing, rock-climbing and canoeing which have marked the growth of skiing.

What portion of these new provinces, and others not now dreamed, may become part of the realm of Dartmouth Out-o'-Doors, depends only on the vision and the abilities of Dartmouth men.

The purpose of this publication is to attempt the capture in these pages of fragments of the romance and glory of a princely domain, that men now in college, whether within or without the Outing Club membership, may be tempted to explore it, that men new to the College shall come with curiosity to make it theirs, that men graduated from the College shall return to it. Its treasures defy estimate. Its only real limits are the bounds of our own vision.

INVASION

Hanover was invaded last winter. Eight young Swiss, armed with an accordion, skis and exceeding good spirit and graciousness, captured the town in February. Their visit was memorable in many ways, and some details of it will be found in the review of the ski season in this issue. This contact with the customs and viewpoints of another land, vitalized by eight personable and intelligent young men, proved an adventure in education of the first order for both the guests and their Dartmouth hosts.

Next winter it may be that Dartmouth will have the privilege to act as host to either a Norwegian or a German university ski team. Eventually an informal international university ski league might grow out of the arrangement. But in any event, too many winters must not be permitted to slip by before Dartmouth either accepts the generous invitation of the Swiss to the Alps or once again arranges to have the Swiss in Hanover.

HINMAN CABIN

It is a particular pleasure to announce that John H. Hinman 'OB and Crawford Hinman '37 have recently turned over to the Club a snug and attractive log cabin, illustrated here, together with a lot, on Reservoir Pond, east of Lyme, N. H. The cabin is strategically located in relation to the cabin chain, and makes a useful base in good hunting and fishing country which will be much used by members of the Club.

Groups of students have always banded together and formed a "club" when the members discovered a common interest. Dartmouth Out-O-Doors reports on the activities of several such organizations including the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club, Ledyard Canoe Club, Bait and Bullet, and Dartmouth Corinthian Yacht Club. These are distinctly minority groups in a student body of 2400 yet each one is given encouragement by the Outing Club and a voice in its affairs and government. Boot and Saddle is another of the allied outdoor clubs. Recently organized groups of skiers, formed to enjoy social and competitive aspects of the sport and associated with the D.0.C., are: The Ski Club Carcajou, the Hell Divers Ski Club, the Sahara Ski Club, and the Stem Twisters Ski Club.

The South American m delegation, led by Warren Chivers '3B, scored a clean sweep in the downhill races during July and captured four out of five first places, including first and.second in die slalom. Wells '39 placed first in the downhill competition, held in the Chilean Andes, followed by Hunter '3B and Chivers '3B, all native Hanoverians. Litchfield '39 placed fourth and fifth place went to another American, Donald Fraser of Seattle. In the slalom first place went to Fraser with Hunter second and a Chilean, Errasuric, third. Chivers and Litchfield were fourth and fifth.

SMART'S POND CABIN, GIFT OF HINMAN FAMILY

DAN HATCH '28

WILL BROWN '37

Ross MCKENNEY