With warm weather on the rise and the end of the semester in sight, students embrace the great outdoors by sunbathing on the Diag and playing tennis and soccer at Palmer Field.
But instead of coping with spring fever in the usual ways, college students may want to make friends and stay in shape while exploring more adventurous and nontraditional activities.
Just a bus ride away - on North Campus - lies the chance for students to register for trips including canoeing, mountain biking, white-water rafting, hiking and rock climbing.
The Department of Recreational Sports, located at the North Campus Recreation Building (NCRB) runs a program called Outdoor Adventures, which offers safe, fun, exciting, informative and affordable trips and clinics both locally and nationally.
"We run a ton of great trips to gain outdoor skills," said Julie Haight, a Kinesiology junior and instructor of Outdoor Adventures.
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| Courtesy of Laurence Kovacs Aaron Danzer and Charlane Brady, a Social Work student, dogsled in Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park. |
"We also rent out hard-to-find things such as tug-of-war ropes, volleyball sets, sleeping bags and picnic packs," Kovacs said.
Additional services offered are various clinics such as bike repair, backpacking, kayaking and map-reading, all of which are a few hours long and cost around $10.
So what do these trips entail, and can a college student on a budget afford them? Kovacs said that the trips are geared towards college students' schedules, spreading the trips throughout the year. "Nothing is planned during finals," Kovacs said.
The trips vary in length as well as in price. The more economically challenged college students might opt for the $20 canoeing day trip as opposed to the more intense and five-day-long, several-hundred-dollar dogsledding trip. Equipment, transportation, instruction and food are almost always included in the price of the adventure trip.
Students need not be Indiana Jones material to participate, but they must be 18 years old. No affiliation with the University is required, but the majority of the participants are undergrads, with the rest being graduate students, families and older people.
"I love working with the college students and the general population," Kovacs said.
As the saying goes, the more the merrier.
"One memorable experience was our spring break trip to Cumberland Island. We had a great diverse group of people. It was great because everyone was so enthusiastic,"
04-02-98
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