MITOC Winter School

Returning to my roots, I decided to join the MIT Outing Club for their annual Winter School. This time, I’m a leader instead of just an eager beaver.

I went on over a dozen trips with MITOC back in my undergrad and Media Lab days, learning valuable skills in backcountry skiing, above-treeline mountaineering, and boosting morale with ABBA-singing. Happy to pay in back to a new generation of outdoorsy nerds.

They have a renewed focus on safety and inclusion, which is welcome to see. As a new member, I had to go through several trainings to learn group management, physical and social safety, and a survival gear checkout. Now I’m ready to co-lead trips up to a few miles from major medical care, and more if I want to get WFA certified.

I co-lead two skiing trips, one introduction to Backcountry on the Sherburne ski trail, and one introduction to Telemark at Mt Wachusett. I think that Type 1 fun was had by most participants, and we got a lot of folks back into the freeheel lifestyle.

I was a bit disappointed that most graduate student participants didn’t know the MIT Cheer. We’ll have to work on that…

I’m a beaver,
You’re a beaver,
We are beavers all!
And when we get together,
We do the beaver call!

E to the u du dx,
E to the x dx!
Cosine secant tangent sine,
3.14159,
Integral, radical, mu, dv!
Slipstick, slide rule, M-I-T!

Go tech!