This semester, Eric Favreau took over as president of the USM Outing Club, one of the university’s most active student organizations.
The group, which has an email list-serv of nearly 500 students, has grown by “leaps and bounds,” he says, but he admits that implementing his larger vision for it is sometimes a struggle.
It’s not a major overhaul that Favreau has in mind.
“I think there has always been a spirit of the outing club that’s not going to change,” he says.
“I’ve just thought we need to start reaching out to new people, and empower them to start climbing mountains on their own.”
The club organizes outdoor activities, including hiking, canoeing, rock-climbing, and skydiving, and though it has a rotating cast of students who slip in and out for individual trips, it has a core of between eight and ten members.
He and others would love to see the club become more than just a tight-knit group, and expand into a full-fledged campus resource.
According to Clymer Berry, an officer in the organization, reaching out to other groups and securing funding are two of Favreau’s strengths.
“Because of how involved Eric is in student government and other clubs, it has really allowed us to have some new connections,” Berry points out.
Favreau and company have tried to make the most of this semester, in typical outing club fashion.
Early on in the semester, there were a series of winter hikes around the area. Over February break, they took a leisurely trip to a cabin in Greenville for some skiing, hiking and snowshoeing.
One winter climbing trip took them to North Conway, where they initially set out to reach three separate Mountain peaks.
The first day, they met with strong winds (approximately 60 miles per hour) on their way up Mt. Washington, forcing them back down.
An attempted re-do the next day was met with a mix of hard, wet snow, to the point that they could hardly see one another.
On their third and final try the next morning, they got to the very same point on Mt. Washington as they had reached the first day. The wind, however, had increased by an additional 20-30 mph.
And yet to hear Favreau tell it, it sounds like one of the highlights of his school year.
“We had a blast. Some of my greatest friends are people here in the outing club,” he says.
The goal now is to see that more of them come from Gorham, where they’ve recently expanded their presence. Outings are always organized to pick students up from both campuses.
“A lot of these trips are hour and a half car rides, and that’s a good way to meet somebody you don’t know,” says Berry, whose job it is to secure equipment. “The bond only gets stronger as you’re hiking.”
But if you can’t make it for any of the team building, members still want to see that you have the means to get outdoors.
They’re working with the recreation department to keep a well stocked “gear closet” to provide things like backpacks, crampons,and ice axes — anything that might not make it into the average dorm room — for anybody who needs them.
Another valuable resource is a pair of memberships to the Maine Rock Gym. For $20 paid to the club, any student is welcome to use the passes throughout the school year, as long as someone else hasn’t already claimed them for that day.
It’s not a bad deal, considering one trip on your own, including rentals, costs the same amount.