News

Seven Hamilton students—trip leaders Pat Dunn ’12 and Leonard Teng ’12 along with Makenna Perry ’12, Leslie Cohen ’12, Lucas Harris ’12, Marco Scheuer ’13 and Max Lopez ’15—were part of a Hamilton Outing Club (HOC) backpacking trip last weekend that tackled two of the Adirondack High Peaks: Algonquin Peak, the second highest mountain in the state at 5,115 feet, and Iroquois Peak, the eighth highest at 4,843 feet.  

Hamilton students gathered on Thursday at the Glen House for a party hosted by the Outdoor Leadership Center. The party, which was thrown in celebration of the fifth anniversary of the Glen House’s dedication, featured refreshments and a variety of outdoors-themed games and competitions.

As the variably extreme (and predominantly unpleasant) second-semester weather on campus reached a crescendo in mid-March, the Hamilton Outing Club sent south four rugged adventurers to explore the half-rock, half-cacti world of the Superstition Wilderness in central Arizona. HOC officer Anna Bastidas ’13, HOC member Adam Fix ’13, and myself, official HOC journalist, with tireless leader Jeannie Folan ‘12, camped five nights and hiked five days through the wilderness, which makes up part of Arizona’s Tonto National Forest.

Andrew Skurka boasts an extraordinary resume—he has been named Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic and Person of the Year by Backpacker Magazine, and has under his belt more than 30,000 miles of backcountry trekking, skiing, and packrafting.

Andrew Skurka, an adventurer, speaker, guide, and writer, will give two presentations at Hamilton on Monday, Feb. 28. The first, a lightweight backpacking skills clinic, will take place at noon in the Glen House. The second, a lecture on Skurka’s Alaska-Yukon expedition, will begin at 7 p.m. in the Red Pit, KJ.  Both events are sponsored by the Hamilton Outing Club and are free and open to the public.

This concludes the tale of the Hamilton Outing Club's three-week trip to  Ecuador over winter break.  Many thanks to Dani Forshay '11 for sharing her experiences and photos.

This is part III of the story of the Hamilton Outing Club's winter break trip to Ecuador. The next day the mountaineering portion of the trek began, and we prepared to hike Cayambe and Cotopaxi, two glaciated volcanoes of 18,996 feet and 19,344 feet respectively.

This is part II of the story of the Hamilton Outing Club's adventure in Ecuador over winter break.  The group hikes across the paramo (high altitude Andean grasslands)  and visits Piñan, a secluded village.

The Hamilton Outing Club spent three weeks of winter break making their sixth trip to the mountains of Ecuador. Ecuador has more ecosystems than any other country in the world, and the nine members of the group visited many of them, from the Amazon rainforest all the way up to glaciated, volcanic peaks. Dani Forshay ’11 was among the students on the trip, and over the course of four entries will share her impressions and memories.

Editor's Note:  As four students prepare to head out on this year’s winter camping seminar in the Adirondacks, we share Hamilton Outing Club officer Kathryn Steck’s ’12 recollection of last year’s trip. This originally appeared in Adirondack Adventurer, Hamilton Outdoor Leadership Program, a Year in Review.