Paddling Freshmen

In September, 984 incoming freshmen of the class of 2002 went on 108 different DOC Trips run by the Outing Club. On one of them, Trip A100-101, the co-leaders were Vail Haak '49 of Hanover and MegFuchs '01 of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was sophomore Meg's second trip—her first as a leader. As for Vail, well, they weren'trunning Freshman Trips, as they were called back when he matriculated in July of 1945 there was a war on, you know but this was the fourth trip he has led since moving to Hanover in 1986.

Some of the 1998 trips were on foot, some were on mountain bikes, some were climbing mountains. A100-101 was by canoe. Guided by Meg and Vail, 12 potential outing clubbers, having successfully passed a swim test in Spaulding Pool, put in in the Magalloway River at Wilson Mills, Maine, on September 4. Equally divided by gender, like their leaders, they split into seven two-person Mad River canoes and paddled and paddled and paddled roughly ten miles a day for three days. (Several weeks earlier Vail had spent six days whitewater rafting on Idaho's Salmon River, on a trip that included eight other Dartmouth alums, but that's another story.)

Trip A100-101 made camp twice, once as the group crossed a corner of the College's Second Grant, then on New Hampshire's Lake Umbagog. Camp wasn't elegant, but there was enough oatmeal and peanut butter and M&Ms so nobody starved. On the third day they connected with the Androscoggin River, where they took out at the Errol Dam and were bussed to Moosilauke for 2002's ultimate bonding experience. Maybe students were green at the start of the trip; they definitely were Green by the time they had Salty Dogged under the aura of Doc Benton.

Co-leaders Haak, left, and Fuchs paddled the distance