The DOC: A Learning Experience

PRESIDENT DICKEY has often said to the undergraduates of Dartmouth, "Your business here is learning." The Dartmouth Outing Club completely endorses this philosophy. In the four years separating the entering freshman from his graduation a lot of learning is done. If he has taken advantage of any of the great educational opportunities that the Outing Club offers, he'll leave the College with outdoor skills and interests that will last him all his life.

In the course of this learning experience the undergraduate can't forget the views from Moosilauke, Cube, or Smarts, the way the snow clings to the spruces by a ski-touring trail, the view from Holt's Cabin on a moonlit night, or the way the sunset ends an afternoon's canoeing on the Connecticut in the warming days of spring. He remembers, too, the hours spent hunting woodcock in an alder swamp, the sudden explosion of a startled partridge, and the wonderful, tired feeling after a day's skiing. He recalls the smell of Woodsmen's Fly Dope, of ski wax and pine tar in the basement of Robinson Hall, or of birch logs burning in the fireplace of a DOC cabin. All these build in him a genuine love for the outdoors and for Dartmouth.

The Outing Club's two divisions, Cabin and Trail and Winter Sports, and three affiliated clubs, Bait and Bullet, Ledyard Canoe Club, and Dartmouth Mountaineering Club, all have active educational programs. Each trains underclassmen in outdoor skills, helping them develop competence in the outdoors and confidence in themselves so that as upperclassmen they will be able to lead and instruct the new crop of underclassmen.

Cabin and Trail develops woodsmen. The learning process for heelers, underclassmen who are working toward meeting their membership requirements, is intensive. Each candidate must fulfill the requirements for hiking, work trips, visiting DOC cabins and shelters, leading trips, and completing a Red Cross firstaid course. In addition he must attend the weekly heeler meetings where he listens to upperclassmen or other speakers like Ross McKenney, former Director of Woodcraft, talk about various aspects of the outdoors. When a heeler earns election into Cabin and Trail, he is well on his way to becoming a hardcore "chubber."

In Cabin and Trail a man may develop considerable skill with an axe or a canoe. He learns by doing. For the most skillful there are Woodsmen's Weekend competitions, three times a year, in which the Dartmouth Woodsmen's Team meets rivals from all over the East. Here a man is put under pressure to show the skills he has learned and developed at Dartmouth with an axe, saw, canoe, fly rod, or pair of snowshoes.

Cabin and Trail's program for skitouring, which for the past two years has begun with a well-attended "Ski-Touring Workshop" at Hanover, has taught many students to find increased enjoyment in the outdoors. Jim Schwedland '48, the Educational Officer for the DOC, helps interested students convert old downhill skis into touring skis. Beginners learn proper form and waxing techniques either at the Ski-Touring Workshop in early January or from experienced skitourers at other times in the winter.

The Trips Department for Cabin and Trail, in addition to sponsoring overnight trips in the fall and the spring, now leads people out on overnight mountain-climbing trips in the winter. On these snowshoe trips the hikers sleep in tents in the snow. All the overnight trips - whether scheduled by the Trips Department or arranged on the spur of the moment by two or three DOCers - teach undergraduates outdoor skills. They learn by doing for themselves or being shown by an experienced camper how to prepare meals, construct shelters, and make comfortable sleeping quarters. Beginners learn the most from these overnight trips, but even experienced campers can always pick up a few pointers from other woodsmen.

WINTER SPORTS, the other main division of the Outing Club, concentrates its efforts on the ski season. Dartmouth is synonymous with skiing and the Winter Sports Division provides renowned learning opportunities in this activity. The Club is in charge of organizing and helping to officiate at all the Dartmouth ski meets. In Winter Sports undergraduates have a good opportunity to learn to set up large programs. In the off-season, they help maintain ski trails like the Snapper Trail on Moosilauke, which would otherwise soon be overgrown and unfit for skiing.

Winter Sports' most important educational function, as far as the undergraduate is concerned, is its direction of the Dartmouth Ski School in conjunction with the DCAC. Here any undergraduate skier can get top-quality instruction and, if he wishes, earn credit toward the physical education requirement. The instruction, headed by George Ostler, is excellent - some of the best in the country. Even if a student has never been on skis before, he may learn to parallel in a season or two.

Winter Sports also guides the Dartmouth Ski Patrol program. Expert skiers are trained to patrol the three collegeowned ski areas and administer first-aid to injured skiers.

The first-aid classes, which include both a standard and an advanced course, are usually directed by doctors of the hospital and are given for the benefit of the community. The courses have always been heavily attended by Cabin and Trail and Winter Sports men. The valuable training teaches one how to administer first-aid for any emergency, whether for an axe wound or a broken leg.

In addition to the two major divisions of the Outing Club, the three affiliated clubs, Bait and Bullet, the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club, and the Ledyard Canoe Club also provide active learning experiences for their members.

Bait and Bullet helps undergraduates sharpen their hunting and fishing skills by practice and by contact with other sportsmen. Some of the members of the club come to Dartmouth with no hunting experience. They take Jim Schwedland's NRA Hunter Safety Course to learn to handle firearms properly. If members don't own guns, they go after game with the club's shotgun or with one of the two deer rifles. Club members also have free access to a fourteen-foot aluminum .boat, duck decoys, and a large freezer. On the weekend trips to the Grant, the Connecticut Lakes, or areas closer to Hanover beginning hunters or fishermen learn a lot about techniques and equipment from their more experienced friends. At club meetings members speak on specific aspects of fishing or hunting that particularly interest them.

Bait and Bullet members comprise the majority of the DOC fishing team for the International Collegiate Game Fish Seminar held every year at Wedgeport, Nova Scotia, at the end of August. Through the generosity of the Nova Scotia Chamber of Commerce, the Schaeffer Brewing Company, and Ashaway Lines, the eleven competing teams from the U. S., Canada, and Japan learn much about big-game fishing. For three days the fishing teams go after bluefin tuna, pollock, halibut, mackerel, and cod during the day and listen to lectures by internationally famous sportsmen in the evenings. Any DOC member who has been on the fishing team has had an unforgettable time.

THE LEDYARD CANOE CLUB has an active program of instruction for undergraduates. The club will teach a be- ginner the fundamentals of canoeing or kayaking. Every fall it holds a "kayak clinic" on the Connecticut to introduce beginners to the sport. The clinic generally lasts about an hour a day for a week and culminates with a beginners' slalom on the White River.

In the winter, kayakists displace swimmers two evenings a week and take over the two swimming pools. Club members practice on a slalom course and work on their "eskimo rolls" through the winter. Over spring vacation the hardcore members of the club head south to practice in white water. Almost as soon as the ice leaves the rivers near Hanover kayakists start daily practice sessions on slalom courses set up on the White and Mascoma Rivers. The intensive practice pays off in the races held all over the East in the spring. Dartmouth makes consistently fine showings in the eastern and national competitions. In addition, five of the racers selected for the world championship competitions over the past three years have been trained by the Ledyard Canoe Club.

Kayakists learn to build their own fiberglass boats and their paddles in the Hopkins Center workshops. For a fraction of the cost of a commercial kayak a Ledyard member can make a durable, sturdy boat.

Ledyard canoeists are internationally known for their trips, which have been reported in the National Geographic magazine. Men taught by the Ledyard Canoe Club have used their skills to canoe down the Danube and through the inland waterways of Japan.

The Dartmouth Mountaineering Club is another organization that provides exceptional educational opportunities. The DMC can turn inexperienced undergraduates into expert technical rockclimbers. In the summer of 1966 eight members of the DMC sharpened their climbing techniques in the Selkirks of British Columbia. Last summer a group of DMC members made the first all-American ascent of Alaska's Mount McKinley. The climbers made a threepronged ascent of the mountain, the highest in North America. Of the men on the expedition only one had had any technical climbing experience before coming to Dartmouth. The others had picked up their skills from the DMC.

The club gives beginners the opportunity to learn to use climbing ropes. Twice a week in the fall and spring the DMC conducts formal rock-climbing classes, which undergraduates may take to fulfill their physical education requirements. Classes are conducted near Hanover on ledges such as those at Norwich. The DMC even uses Bartlett Tower for climbing practice. It owns climbing equipment which members may use. After the beginner has mastered the basic climbing techniques, he can develop his skills on occasional weekend trips. Club members journey to the White Mountains to Whitehorse and Cathedral ledges for rock-climbing and to Mount Washington for climbing on ice.

In the two divisions and the three affiliated clubs of the DOC educational opportunities abound. Anyone who is willing to invest*a little time and has the desire to learn can gain much. The opportunities are there. All the undergraduate has to do is take advantage of them.

The undergraduate, however, doesn't have to belong to one of the divisions or affiliated clubs of the Outing Club in order to take advantage of the educational aspects of the DOC. There are plenty of other opportunities.

Al Merrill's Ski Team gives good skiers the opportunity to become outstanding competitors. Under Coach Merrill's guidance many skiers develop into high caliber national competitors and a few may even go on to the Olympics. Although most of the Ski Team members have skied competitively in high school or prep school, it is at Dartmouth that they really develop. They may succeed like Ed (Gus) Williams '64 or Ned Gillette '67. Both men had distinguished careers as cross-country skiers for Dartmouth. In the Army Ed was a member of a special training unit for the biathalon, an event which combines cross-country skiing and target shooting. He was one of the men to represent the United States in the event in the 1968 Winter Olympics. Ned, likewise, was named to the Olympic team in cross-country skiing.

In its overall educational program the Outing Club has one of its most important resources in Jim Schwedland, the Educational Officer for the DOC. "Schwed" exposes undergraduates to many aspects of the outdoors. He conducts outdoor recreational classes as a part of the physical education program. The members of these classes fish, shoot, ski tour, and learn woodsmen's skills. In the fall and spring Schwed, a certified NRA instructor, conducts hunter safety courses which enable undergraduates to meet the qualifications for hunting licenses. He coaches the Woodsmen's Weekend teams. For the past few years he has made much of the equipment for the DOC Nova Scotia Fishing Team, which he also coaches. Interested students can learn to reload their own amunition from Schwed. He may also show them how to make touring skis out of discarded downhill skis. Many undergraduates own snowshoes which they made themselves under Schwed's guidance starting with an ash tree and a roll of nylon cord. Anyone who wants to learn outdoor skills or how to make outdoor equipment will find a valuable guide in Jim Schwedland.

The Outing Club gives undergraduates the chance to learn skills and develop outdoor interests that will last them all their lives. Bonds of friendship that develop around a fire in a DOC cabin after a day's hunting or skiing are strong and help cement a feeling of fellowship and of love for Dartmouth. DOC members show their fellowship and Dartmouth spirit in their activities. They spend vacations pursuing Outing Club interests because that is what they enjoy doing most. That is why some undergraduates spend a summer climbing McKinley or two weeks hiking the 260 miles of the Long Trail in Vermont. That is why DOC men canoe down the Allagash at the end of the summer and spend spring vacations working in the spruce-fir and hardwood forests of the College Grant or skiing with DOC friends in the Rockies.

The DOC, traditionally the College's most distinctive activity and over the years the teacher and inspiration for thousands of Dartmouth men, still fulfills its unique role in student life. It still keeps alive one of Dartmouth's most important traditions — a genuine love of the outdoors.

Snowshoers, packing supplies and books, take off on a weekend cabin trip.

Jim Schwedland '48, Educational Officerof the DOC, is the key man in the Clubprogram of undergraduate instruction.

Ledyard Canoe Club members get theirthrills on the White River each spring.

Jack Noon '68 (left) and John Schumacher '67 display part of their catch asmembers of the Nova Scotia fishing team.

Dartmouth sawing team giving their all in Woodsmen's Weekend competition.