With the Outing Club
D.O.C. Announces Novel Boys' Camp to be Conducted at New Moosilauke Ravine Camp This Summer
WITH THE OPENING of the new Moosilauke Ravine Camp last fall, the Outing Club was able to extend the scope of its activities because the Camp is open to undergraduates as well as alumni and other devotees of skiing. In the coming summer season, when the students will leave the Hanover scene for three months, the Ravine Camp will serve still another function—namely, as a boys' camp for sons of alumni and friends of the College.
There is no shortage of boys' camps in New England, and the summer camp plans do not involve duplicating what is provided in dozens of existing camps. Our location and facilities, and the instructors available through the Outing Club and the College will allow us to do something novel in several respects. We hope to attract boys twelve years old or older, but below college age, and prepare them in a brief session to live safely and sanely in the out-of-doors. Each course will consist of only a two weeks' term, entirely devoted to woodcraft, nature study, first-aid instruction, safe handling of firearms, canoeing, camping and hiking in a comparative wilderness. With proper allowance for the age and physical development of the boys entrusted to us, we hope to make this a somewhat rugged camp session which will give the boys a little more self-confidence and a limbering-up which should be beneficial for any sports which they may engage in at home during the school year.
Because the Ravine Camp was designed for year-round use in an area where the winters are severe, our physical facilities are more substantially built than in many a summer camp. We have telephone, electric lights, shower baths, modern toilets, hot and cold running water, and a well equipped kitchen. Sleeping quarters for the boys will be in Natt Emerson Camp in rooms having from four to six beds. Each two-week camp session will be limited to about twenty-five boys, so that there will be a maximum of personal instruction and supervision. Dining room, workrooms for hobbies, and social quarters are in the main building shown in the picture on this page. Unlike many camps, there will be no restrictions on visits by parents who will be accommodated in the main camp.
The Ravine Camp will serve good wholesome fare, with emphasis on fresh vegetables, fruit and milk. The kitchen as well as the physical well-being of the boys will be under the supervision of a competent medical director.
Ross McKenney, a former president of the Maine Guides' Association, who has been connected with the D.O.C. for three years and who has had twelve years' experience as instructor in a boys' camp, will teach the boys some of the things which he has learned in 25 odd years as a guide, hunter, camper, trap shooter and fisherman.
The program for each camp session will center around the area which has been called with some justification "Dartmouth at Moosilauke." We will visit the Moosilauke Summit Camp, which has been under D.O.C. operation for twenty seasons, and roam extensively around our Mountain to visit the various D.O.C. cabins: Armington, on a beautiful swimming pond bearing the same name; Great Bear and Glencliff cabins, both on the Glencliff trail which ascends Moosilauke on the western side; Agassiz Basin cabin, near North Woodstock with its wild mountain brook and interesting geology and Lost River.
Hand in hand with the outdoor exercise will go some practical instruction in the natural history of the area. We are unusually fortunate in counting among the friends of the D.O.C. and of this summer camp project such members of the Dartmouth faculty as Professors Leland Griggs of the Zoology department; Frederick S. Page and Joseph S. Tidd in the Botany field; Richard H. Goddard, professor of Astronomy; and Professor James W. Goldthwait and Richard E. Stoiber representing the Geology field. Richard L. Weaver, the College Naturalist, who has done much to stimulate an interest in natural history among the D.O.C. members, will also visit with us and Sidney C. Hazelton, assistant professor of Physical Education, will give the boys some fundamentals on first aid. With men such as these, the nature instruction will be a practical and stimulating process of collecting and observing along the trail, and not a dry classroom method.
The Dartmouth Outing Club invites inquiries from parents in regard to the camp sessions. Rates, to be announced later, will not exceed 175 per session including all side trips. The first session is planned from July 20th to August 2nd, a second session will extend from August 3rd through the 16th. It will be permissible for a boy to enroll for both terms.
MOOSILAUKE RAVINE CAMP (LEFT), HEADQUARTERS FOR THE D.O.C. BOYS' CAMP THIS SUMMER, AND ROSS MCKENNEY (RIGHT) WHO WILL DIRECT THE CAMP PROGRAM.
