With the D.O.C.

DURING the cold and snowless month of January various officials of the Dartmouth Outing Club could readily be identified by their fellow students as they hopefully scanned the sky and pounced on TheNew York Times weather map each morning to look for hints of snow in the future. As you doubtless know, the long-awaited snow finally arrived in the nick of time; not a great deal, to be sure, but enough to allow the construction of fraternity and dormitory statues, although the ski meet events had to be held in such widely divergent places as Kimball Union Academy, Pico Peak, and Mount Sunapee. Needless to say, the D.O.C. eagerly awaits the completion of the new Dartmouth ski area at Holt's Ledge, where, snow conditions permitting, we will be able to hold all four events in one place.

Carnival, as always, was heavily publicized, and I'm sure the details are well known to the readers of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. However, I'd like to take this opportunity to slip in a public word of thanks to all the many, many people, graduates and undergraduates alike, who generously and freely gave their time to make the 1956 Carnival successful.

Early in March over one hundred Outing Clubbers, from Dartmouth, Colby Jr., Smith, Wellesley, Mt. Holyoke and other popular institutions gathered together at the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge for the annual Connecticut Valley Conference. Although here was no "conferring" of a formal nature (somehow this was forgotten), there was no lack of informal discussion among the delegates; and moreover, the square dancing was fine and the skiing, thanks to a new innovation in the form of Dave Heald '42 and his Tucker Sno-Cat, was never better.

In the same month a group of four DOC'ers, headed by Mountaineering Club Head Barry Corbet '58, climbed the Knife Edge of Mt. Katahdin, a familiar climb in summer but one which has never, before been done in winter.

On April 6 the Outing Club was turned over to new management. Elected to do the things the present lame-duck administration failed to do, and to correct the things they did, is President Clark Griffiths '57, who previously held the nerve-wracking job of Director of Competitions. He will be aided by the Veep, Bob Dennis '57, and the Directors of Cabin and Trail, Winter Sports and Carnival, respectively Tony Ryan '57, Tony Williamson '57, and Charlie White '57.

Projects being turned over to the unsuspecting new officers are the construction of cabins on the summit of Moosilauke and on Holt's Ledge, as well as tentative plans for a new Peaks Cabin in the College Grant. Such a cabin would be highly desirable in the face of the increasing popularity of the Grant, not only during the hunting and fishing seasons but during the winter as well. D.O.C. groups have visited the Grant on snowshoeing expeditions several times in the last few months, and all returned to Hanover madly waving their arms above their head and sputtering excitedly, "You ought to see the snow up there."

Speaking of snow - again - the D.O.C. officers who participated in the pre-Carnival center of campus prayers to Ullr, the snow god, are beginning to wonder about the effectiveness of their pleas. Also wondering are the students who returned from spring vacation, having spent several weeks in Bermuda and Florida, only to find a snowstorm raging in Hanover and a campus blanketed in white. "I didn't know I had it in me," remarked one supplicant, a Carnival official, who is thinking of renting himself out to the highest-bidding ski area. Anyway, here it is April 12, it's below freezing outside, and the forecast is for - you guessed it - snow.

This year's Outing Club spring trip, led by Bob Dennis '57 of Virginia, went south, naturally, for climbing and hiking along the Blue Ridge and in the Great Smokies. The travellers returned with glowing accounts of the trees and flowers in bloom "down there."

With the coming of spring the Outing Club season reaches its height as large numbers of trips go out to take advantage of the warm weather and bright sun; the die-hard skiers are heading for Tuckerman's, the fishermen to the College Grant, the mountaineers to Moosilauke and Mt. Washington, and hordes of others to various cabins in the D.O.C. chain. Alumni, I assume, are as subject to spring fever as the highly susceptible students, and with this in mind I'd like to remind the readers of this magazine that the D.O.C. cabins are open for use by alumni as well as by undergraduates.

D.O.C. President