The end will never come

You would think that after spending 24 hours a day with my cabinhopping group that we would be thoroughly sick of each other, but you would be surprised. After getting back to my dorm, packing up and taking a shower, and climbing a few problems at the gym, I immediately sent out a text - I just couldn't resist. Deciding that we weren't quite ready to drop a bunch of money in town, we picked up some pizza dough, toppings and some of New England's best cider for another great night of camaraderie. I know that breaks are important, but to be honest, I'm getting quite comfortable at school. On the other hand, the slopes beckon!

50 ways...

To get your money's worth out of your Chaos hat on a camping trip.

Keep warm, especially on cold nights, as it can be pulled all the way down.



Pull it over your eyes to take a nap.
To open the wood stove with.



Flip the pancake pan.
Eat the pancake off of.
Sit on while eating lunch.
protect your hands during an impromptu snowball fight.
Look generally awesome!

damn

That's all I could utter, Seriously; after spending a term at Dartmouth getting used to the gloomy overcast weather. Coming over the ridge of Mt Mousilake to see a completely bluebird sky in both directions was a pretty big open mouth - stopped in my tracks moment. Not only that, but I quickly turned my face to the sun and really tried to enjoy its warmth. Growing up in Colorado, it was easy to take the sun for granted, but as I mentioned when the sun comes out on campus, all studying is pretty much off for the day. Being on top of Mt Mousilake made it feel that much stronger.



With the help of some serious singing, everything from Jay Z to working on the railroad, we powered up mousilake by 11 and gave ourselves plenty of time to enjoy the summit. After a long lunch lying in the sun, we reluctantly continued on our route toward the end of the trail. Much more relaxed (and in shape!) than at the beginning of the trip, it was hard to leave the sun, but another fun night in a cabin lay ahead.

Big Bad mt mist

Just the name itself says it all: MT MIST. It has an aura about it, one of a daunting trek with treacherous ridge lines and stream crossings. It suggests that it is shrouded in mystery and that only the keenest of hikers can find it.



Well, only the keenest of hikers do find it, the sign at least. It isn't because the summit is too dangerous to reach, but because if you aren't paying attention, you might just walk past it. Since the hardest part of our hike was such a funny peak along the AT, we had the chance of sleeping in and joking around. On the trail, we crafted a story (one that I dare say does not need repeating), by going down the line and adding a word. Somehow, the story went from two cannibal goats (they ate wool socks), to porn star slugs. How the two are related, we will never know.

Bedtime?

Was it just last week that I was staying up late stressing over finals? Today, in anticipation of a long steep day of conquering Mt Cube, we got up early from the tent, ate a quick breakfast of peanut butter and tortilla, which I may never eat again and hit the trail. Surprising even support crew, we arrived to our next checkpoint at 3:00, well before sundown. Chowing down on some delicious chili, we made quick work of a few quarts of the stew. After refueling our supplies and dropping our trash, no one could help but yawn. It may have been only 6PM, but after a full day of hiking over ice, 9 college kids passed out by their own volition. Isn't that a scary thought!

The sweat lodge

What was supposed to be our coldest night camping along our 40 mile trek turned into an at first pleasant then uncomfortable surprise. Support crew had equipped our army surplus tent with a stove the could have heated an entire house. Within an hour of our arrival, the stove was red hot. Patrick cooking up some snacks and within ten minutes the tent was about 100 degrees. As you can imagine, with the shape of the tent, no one wanted to stand up. For cooking duties, we pulled straws determining who would do the honors of standing over the stove.



In the middle of the night, with temperatures still in the tropical region, one cabinhopper summed it up, "I knew that this was going to be a trip where I would unwind from finals, but I didn't know that a cleanse was part of it as well!"

Hop!

After finals, instead of going home like a normal person, I decided to go cabinhopping, the Dartmouth outing club's winter hiking and camping trip. The trip looked like it was stacked to be a blast, and sure enough it was. Four summits, ten miles of hiking each day, and enough ice to keep everyone on their toes was a blast and I had the chance to meet a new group of people that I might have never met. We started off in the skiway parking lot.



We hiked to the summit of Smarts, Cube, and Mist, then conquered Mousalake with a combination of grit and, of course, singing every tune that popped into our heads.



Between hikes, we got to know each other over good food, ghost stories, and plenty of card games. I couldn't have asked for a better stress buster after an intense finals week!

But officer...

It was Saturday night after finals were over. My school buddies and I had already watched a movie, eaten, and anything else we could think of, but weren't quite ready to go to bed yet. Options in Hanover are pretty one dimensional from frat basements to frat basements, but we thought of a way better idea: buildering. Buildering is just what it sounds like - bouldering on buildings. We chose the chapel on campus because it was made of granite, which obviously is very rocklike. All was going well in traversing the walls until safety and security arrived. It wasn't as if we were climbing onto the roof or defacing the building, but apparently a sober alternative on a Saturday night wasn't buildering in their books. After holding straight faces and getting a good talking to, we started to walk away when one of the officers called us back. He thought that we should get involved with the outdoor programs at school.

If only he knew!

Natural art

Pro tip! The fungi (I like that word :)) that grow off the sides of trees in the northeast make really great pieces of art. I found one on one of our hikes, and one of the girls on our trip painted it with crayons. I bet you can guess which character is me! Now, I want to collect a bunch... just imagine using these as awards at a race!

A monumental occasion

We were sitting down for dinner and talking about the snow. All was well, even with the smell of wet hiking gear drying above the wood stove until one of my friends Andrew asked an incredulous question, "How do you make a snowman?" We all just stared. I guess it makes sense that he hasn't made a snowman since he lives in New Mexico, or Mexico 2.0, as everyone at the Billings Thanksgiving trip called it, but I still thought it was crazy that any 19yr old would not know how to build a snowman. We decided that we needed to fix the crises, so after dinner, we set off with headlamps to make a monster of a snowman. It may be a bit covered in leaves, but for a midnight project, I think it is pretty worthy as a first snowman.

Relaxing Thanksgiving...

Psyche!

Are you kidding? A relaxing Thanksgiving with plenty of snow on the ground? That is even less than likely! Instead, we headed to the base of Tuckerman's Ravine for some a sledding adventure. After dragging our sleds up the three hour hike, we grabbed some lunch and settled in for an hour and a half sled down, covering the 4 miles of Sherman's Run. Let's just say that there were face shots for sure!

Sledding Suess

What do mature college students do when given a foot of buttery snow and sleds? Build jumps and Dr Suess snowmen, of course! At least that is what we did on our Billings Thanksgiving trip!

Sleep?

Who needs sleep?

Still tired from getting a deer and butchering it, I realized that I was signed up for a cabin overnight and sunrise hike. It's a good thing that I didn't poop out, because the views of Armington Lake as the sun rose were just spectacular. I don't know why I need to re-realize the beauty of the break of dawn every time I go hunting or go on an early hike, but hopefully some of these photos will prevent me from forgetting again. There really is nothing like the first light of the day or being surrounded by a herd of bugling elk, not even beauty sleep.

First deer!

Speaking of my cave woman side, I had the chance to go hunting again! This time, it was too crunchy for stalking, so I sat in a good spot and waited. The alum that brought me was hunting the other side, but since he was one of those walk-like-a-deer hunters that can spot a deer every five seconds, he brings his camera along to photograph deer that aren't big enough for his taste. In the time period between 6:30 and 7:20 he took 15 pictures of deer. I saw one. It wasn't that they weren't around - I could hear them moving - my eyes just aren't well enough trained yet. Lucky enough for me, my one deer was well within my taste.

I took the shot, waited thirty minutes, woke my dad up with an excited phone call and followed the blood path to a nice six pointer. After cleaning him up and dragging him back to the car, I only had to walk through main-street in broad daylight wearing a pair of seriously bloody pants. I can assure you that the weird looks were all well deserved, but I was too ecstatic to notice for the most part. Next mission: see how many deer I can photograph between now and the end of term!

Tanning

Just when I thought that it would be easy! Tanning a teeny tiny beaver pelt is a ton more work than I ever thought it would be. After skinning the beaver and scraping the hide clean with a special knife, I had to wash it in detergent, pickle it, make it basic, then tan it, all around a week's worth of wet work. Now that it is out of the tanning bucket, it is time to break the fibers down into some nice and soft leather. Even though it is a lot of work, getting in touch with my more cave woman side is pretty fun!

Beaver

In the grant, after hiking seven miles carrying a gun, we finally got back to the cabin, and I was ready to dig into some work. Right then, Chris, one of the Alums, asks whether anyone wanted to come learn how to trap beavers. Of course, I couldn't resist that offer, so off I went, prepared to get a little muddy. It ends up, I should have prepared to get completely soaked, not just muddy.

The way that you trap a beaver with a leg trap in NH is that you need the beaver to drown once trapped, otherwise he will bite off his own foot. In order to make the beaver drown, you set the trap on a wire connected to a heavy metal plate on the bottom of the river. When he gets trapped, he will dive into the river and since the line is one way, he won't be able to get out. As you can expect, the metal plates are heavy and standing on a slippery slope, trying to throw one of those in is a trick. On my second trap, I didn't let go of the wire soon enough and ended up throwing myself in as well.

After getting the traps set, we decided to check them in the morning. Come morning and I had caught one! Chris said that he will teach me how to tan it, so I guess that I will get my fair share of skinning and butchering even without a deer!

Grant weekend!

The Bait and Bullet club on campus planned a weekend of hunting on the grant and there was no way that I was going to miss my opportunity to get out there! The first night, it snowed a good three inches, so the animal tracking was prime. I can now identify a bobcat from a lynx and a small deer form a giant. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to fill my tag, but the learning experience and the nice weather was all I could have asked for. Later at camp, one of the other hunters found some moose sheds, so we got to have some fun with those.

Fishin in the dark

Bait and Bullet is the most interesting club on campus. At first glance, you would think that it was an anticlub, meaning they are really good at scaring people off. Not because they are redneck and blast country music and drive big trucks, but because they blast and dance to dubstep. Weird combo, I know. Either way, I was joining bait and bullet whether they were bizzare or not, so I decided to sign up for an overnight fishing trip. Turns out, under all their bad music choice the BnB guys are pretty damn smart.

We didn't catch any fish unfortunately, but by the time we left, I had stopped hooking my jacket with my fly and had learned a lot about marine biology sitting around the fire. Also, they ended up being super open to new endeavors and have made room in the budget for an archery setup, so I can lead some archery trips!

I guess BnB is another one of those groups of smart goofballs that you need to spend a night around a fire talking about ocean ecosystems and sustainable fish farming before making a real assumption about them.

Lest the old traditions fail!

As the alma mater suggests, Dartmouth is kinda all about traditions. This fact was proved ten times over at the Dartmouth-Princeton hockey game. As tradition, we throw tennis balls at the Princeton goalie after the first goal. Even with multiple warnings that throwing things on the ice would result in a penalty for Dartmouth - pretty much every time play was paused - tradition won. After every single goal it literally rained tennis balls. I think I even saw a few apples in there - must have been a tribute to New England.

Trees!

One of the biggest advertisements when I was a prospective student for Dartmouth was the pretty trees. In Steamboat, there are trees, but generally if you are climbing one, it is because you are trying to pull it down. Trees here are huge! With some extra time before we had to head back to school, I got my entire sunrike group to climb one with me. I told you I am smart co leader!

WOW

Just when I thought that I had enough of NH and the east coast in general - the humid cold, the rain, the agony - a few friends and I stumble upon this: reckless breakfast. Even though we should have been studying, we couldn't leave with this band performing! The fiddler is pretty good, huh? Most are Dartmouth employees! I can now say, after a taste of some serous NH bluegrass that I am no longer sick of this. If bad weather and cold is what is needed to create a band like this, bring it on!

Hint hint

You know that finals are coming up when your parents send you this!

bike town USA

It really is amazing how much cars cost us. Personally, they rob us of exercise, money, and drain energy. Imagine if you never needed to buy gas, insurance, or need to worry about getting damage. As a nation, they prevent the development of a competent public transportation system, contribute plenty of nastiness to the air and don't help with that little problem of obesity and healthcare costs. I make an effort to use my bike as often as I can, mostly because biking places puts me in a better mood than driving. Whatever reason, whether you are
environmentally conscious, want to save money or your back, I dare you to try to use your bike, feet and public transport more. Imagine the difference! (Photo courtesy of Inside out PR)

you call this snow?!

I don't think that the champagne powder of Hanover, NH is going to be quite as easy to shovel this winter! I guess that I might be just a bit spoiled!

Women in the wilderness

The morning after lodgaween, I was signed up for a Franconia treck. The only problem was that after the really boring night, everyone slept in a tad. Instead, we decided to summit Mount Moosalake, a sizable haul right outside the lodge. It was a good thing we decided on Moosalake because the foot snowdrifts probably would have been waist deep on top of Franconia Ridge!

Lodgaween

More Dartmouth lingo! Lodgaween is a haloween celebration at the hiking club's biggest cabin, The Lodge! Pros: great food, company, dancing, and music. Cons no insulation and no heat. The combination made for a really interesting night!

Rise and shine

As a smart college student, I should take every chance I get to sleep in, right? Of course not! That would be too logical, instead as a new coleader in the hiking club, I decided to lead a sunrike, otherwise known as a sunrise hike. Dartmouth really has a way with abbreviations, let me tell you.

We parted school at 6AM sharp on a short hike to the Gile fire tower with beautiful views of the valley. The only problem was that there were no views to be had and no sunrise to be seen. We did see the first snow out of everyone at school. I don't know who threw the first ball of slush, but by the time we got back to campus, we didn't even bother to get out our raincoats.

Sleep is so overrated!

Nothing beats a hike

Mt Cardigan was beautiful, if not a tad chilly. The leaves were in their full glory and the outing club group that I went with was great. As I said, there is nothing that beats a hike. It energizes you and lets you blow off some steam, so that when you realize that you haven't done any work over the weekend, you don't freak out too bad!

Homecoming

What is/was/will be homecoming for you? A big football game? Some drinking? Fun? Well Dartmouth's homecoming certainly had all those important elements, but decided that it wasn't enough. We needed some crazier tradition, so what comes to mind? A bonfire the size of a small mansion, of course!

If not, then I will fill you in on the entire spectacle. For two days, freshmen build and decorate a bonfire that is designed by engineers not to fall while burning, then run around it their class number + 100. That means that as a freshman, I was supposed to run 115 laps around a bonfire so hot that if I stopped running the embers would have singed my shirt! Meanwhile, upperclassmen surround the fire egging on the freshman to touch the fire, which is illegal. Instead of trying to describe it, look for yourself below.

Studying

The way it should be done!

I don't know about you, but out of my entire midterm study week, my most productive hour was spent with a dry erase marker and a bus window. Laugh, but seriously, that is the way studying should be - with plenty of fresh air. How cool would it be if the side of schools was whiteboard material?!

Super Supportive

I know everyone is rolling their eyes right now, but after signing up for the overnight shift for supporting the 50, my crew and I became super duper supporters. Every year, the Dartmouth outing club hosts a 50 mile endurance extravaganza from campus to Mount Mousilake, which is, by definition 50 miles away. Teams hike between 15 (running) and 40 (ouch!) hours through the night along the AT trail with their only respite being the support teams every ten miles or so. My crew and I were stationed at Atwell Hill, an overnight station with groups supposedly arriving between midnight and noon the next day.

There is a tradition for support crews at Dartmouth - you need to have an awesome theme to go with your hospitality. Some crews go for trippy themes, but since we figured that the hikers would already be tripping by the time they arrived at our station, we went for a much calmer bed and breakfast theme - The Cow Pie Inn.

Our crew arrived at eleven at night to set up our inn in the pouring rain (thank god I wasn't hiking in that!). After that we prepared our stove for some serious egg mcmuffin making and tuned the guitar. By midnight we were both ready and overtired, having woken up for classes that morning. For the next six hours we alternated between sing alongs like wagon wheel and teaching each other to dance. Needless to say, we were thoroughly bonded before the first hikers arrived with stories of waist deep mud at six am.

For the next seven hours, we manned the egg griddle, patched blisters and gave foot/back massages to the weary hiker who came through. By the time we headed for a celebratory dinner, our group was indistinguishable from the hikers as far as sanity went. That day set a record for me. Well two actually. I don't think that I have ever sang so much in my life and 50 hours without sleep is definitely a record I am not keen on breaking any time soon.

That is until next year when I complete the hike!