Green Corner: Outing Club
For the past two winter terms, the Outing Club has hiked the mountains arounds Newfound Lake on very special trips, complete with sledding, an outdoor hot tub and sleeping inside a cosy log cabin in the middle of the woods.
Our overnight visit, on which we brought Mr. Chisholm and Mr. McLaughlin along with twelve brave hikers, we had the pleasure of staying at their friend Kirk Phelps’ log cabin. After a beautiful hike up to Newfound Lake, where you can see the white-faced peaks of some of New Hampshire’s Franconia Ridge, we settled down in the cabin to make pizza for dinner.
The next day we hiked a smaller trail behind Kirk’s house before heading home. Nearly every hiker that has been on the trip says it was one of the most fun times they’ve had at Exeter, and this is the kind of experience you can get on an Outing Club trip.
The Outing Club has accomplished much this year already, and with good weather just around the bend, we have plans for more great hikes as we start up our spring term.
We will be following our regular term schedule of one day hike, where we get multiple different faculty members to join us, and one overnight hike. Just like last spring term, we want the planning for spring trips to go beyond the co-heads, and our core faculty and open it up to anyone who would like to talk to one of our co-heads to suggest a hike that they would like to see happen this term.
If we get enough support for this idea, we would love to see more than just two hikes per term, but many more lead by any member of our community, with the help and supplies of our Outing Club.
For this spring term we also plan to have more Outing Club events on campus. We will be planning activities ranging from walks in the trails to kayaking in a nearby lake or river. We hope to plan an Earth Day walk with EAC, and as with our hikes this term, are open to ideas for outdoor activities on campus from anybody who might need our help and supplies.
Outing Club is welcome to everybody, and nobody has ever been on an Outing Club trip with us and regretted it. It’s a fun and relaxing time where you can really take a second to break away from your academics, leave campus and enjoy nature. You never know how much it can be unless you try it, and it may seem overwhelming to hike a mountain, but the payoff is worth it.