Last Thanksgiving Mt. Hood was covered in many feet of snow, but that didn’t change Thomas Hornsby’s plans.
“It made the hike to the cabin very strenuous, but made the skiing fantastic,” he said.
During his freshman year Hornsby came within 100 feet of the summit of Mt. Hood, visited the Redwoods, and climbed 12,000 feet of Mt. Shasta.
He did it all at a low cost and while making new friends through the University’s Outdoor Program.
The program is arranging trips for new and returning students during Week of Welcome, including a $30 climb to the summit of South Sister volcano.
The overnight camp and climb is just one of a dozen or so trips to help students see more of Oregon and “get stoked on the outdoors,” according to Dave Villalobos, the trip facility and rental program manager.
Fred Sproat, who will serve as the initiator for the South Sister volcano excursion along with Hornsby, found out about the program during Week of Welcome last year.
“We sort of got into it really hard-core as freshmen. We took a lot of trips, almost every weekend,” Sproat said.
Hornsby said through one year in the program he learned Oregon’s geography as well as any native Oregonian.
“I have been told that I have done things that people living in Oregon for many years have never done,” he said.
Sproat admits to relying on Sunday night pots of coffee and mid-week cramming to keep going.
“I love being outside enough that I’d wake up early or stay up late. I’d devote Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to school so I could leave Friday or miss Monday,” he said in a phone interview from Minnesota.
But he said experience isn’t required for these trips, even the one to South Sister.
“It’s the tallest of the three sisters but it’s pretty mellow this time of year,” he said. “It’s not impossible. I did it last year as a freshman.”
Other trips are even cheaper – some just $12- and don’t require as much time, Villalobos said.
“There’s kind of a mixture for pretty much anyone. If they want to stay dry and get dirty and go out to South Sister for a couple of days, there’s that option. If they want to do a full day trip they can go rafting or sea kayaking. It’s kind of a mixture of all different kinds of activities,” he said.
These Week of Welcome trips are not the way the program usually operates, however.
“It’s a consensus-based, cooperative process. Normally everything is grassroots. It’s not like we have a set agenda,” Assistant Director Suzanne Hanlon said.
Outdoor Program office manager Rithy Khut said, “We’re not your typical outdoor group. If you go to go to the University of Washington, (or) you go to Oregon State, in their outdoor programs you would pretty much find a leader-based group in that there are professionals and there are people who sign up to go out with those professionals.
“Whereas, in the Outdoor Program… co-op rules apply. There are no professionals. There are no leaders. There are people we have called initiators and their sole purpose is to initiate trips.”
A student or community member can become an initiator after learning about the group’s philosophy and the procedures of its rental facility.
“They learn a little about group management and processes and things like that. We don’t want them to feel that they have to take on the burden of responsibility because they shouldn’t,” Khut said.
Initiators can post ideas for trips in the program’s room in the basement of the EMU. The rustic-looking room has couches and many maps, guidebooks, and magazines about the outdoors.
Then others read the ideas and sign up, contributing whatever knowledge they have, Villalobos said.
“I really like to imagine all of our trips, on some level, being opportunities for education and a way to cooperatively share that experience collectively,” he said.
The trips combine people with different skills, and with some luck, travelers who don’t know each other, according to Khut.
“We tell people that half of the spots should be allocated for people that you don’t know. So it can’t be just a whole dorm complex saying who wants to go on a trip and taking all the spots. That’s unfair to people who wanted to go and now there’s 12 people who know each other and the one person who doesn’t know anyone,” he said.
The program also tries to accommodate families and single parents.
On a recent trip sheet, Hanlon wrote, “Kids are welcome on this trip – I’ll have my 5- and 9-year-olds along.”
She said students without children still go on those trips.
“A lot of students are missing their own siblings and families,” she said.
She said the program is about “passing down the experience and helping people learn.”
One new student is already waiting.
Justin Oliphant is a transfer student who chose Oregon in part because of what he read online about the program.
“I’m here in the Outdoor Program to meet like-minded individuals who like going outside and being out there and not having a flushable toilet. And maybe dirtying their hands and bloodying them up a crack,” he said.
Anyone who wants to attend a Week of Welcome trip must sign up at 2:30 p.m. or 4 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 20 in the Outdoor Program room in the basement of the EMU.
Pursuing outdoor adventure
Daily Emerald
September 17, 2007
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