With the D.O.C.

"IT'S STILL HARD TO BEAT A NEW HAMPSHIRE SPRING," SAYS CLUB HEAD

WE skied on Moosilauke until April 20 but down here in the Hanover lowlands and environs, New England spring, such as it is, came before that and with it the associated outdoor activities. The "Spring" trips began early and what was an April walk at a thousand feet became a December climb at 4000. The first big trip of the season featured corn-snow skiing in Tuckerman's Ravine, followed the next week by a hiking trip into the Sandwich Range where Mt. Whiteface was climbed. The ice went out of the river, a film on white-water canoeing was shown; Ross McKenney had paddle blanks in his shop and the Ledyard Canoe Club, a part of the wartime DOC, made hasty plans for reorganization on its pre-war foundations. DOCers with packs full of grub and sleeping bags dropped in for keys, candles, and some clean dish towels and started for Happy Hill Cabin or maybe Clough.

The afternoons got warmer. The Dartmouth Mountaineering Club, more or less extinct during the war, went through the throes of re-vitalization that we've all experienced. It was hard to find a sittable chair in the DOC office for all the nylon rope, ice axes, pitons, piton hammers, and carabiners. On sunny afternoons the rockclimbers were on the Norwich cliffs. A rock-climbing class was started and in cooperation with the Physical Education Department at the gym, freshmen and sophomores attending were given needed "rec" credit. Fundamentals were learned in the Bema and advanced climbing was done on the Norwich cliffs.

The first of May came. The "law was off" on brook trout. During most of the winter the club's fly-fishermen had been busy in Ross McKenney's shop tying feathery lures, with such remarks as "The hackle goes on 0.K., but I can't get the wings on straight." A few purists tried their flies on opening day, but the rest of us used worms with more success.

Doug Wade, the College Naturalist, and a small group known as the "duck-hawkers" have been risking life and limb on the local cliffs observing and photographing that interesting bird. Earlier there was another coterie, "the woodcockers," observing the mystic spring evening activities of the woodcock. An hour of this with its sunset and moonrise makes mid-week rigors easier to contend with.

Doc Griggs said bee-lining was as exciting as deer hunting. One man built a plexiglass bee box and got some oil of anise from Putnam's, so the DOC may be dealers in honey along with its other activities before the summer is out.

Food is hard to get, transportation is always a problem, a loss of continuity caused by the war has increased our difficulties; there'll be mosquitoes and black flies, poison ivy, and twisted ankles, but it's still hard to beat a New Hampshire spring.

THE DOC GOES MOUNTAIN GOAT. Merrill McLane '42 (left). Associate Director of the Outing Club, aids Jack Snobble '44 as the Mountaineering Club of the DOC practices on the Norwich cliffs.