Never "Members Only" at Mountain Club

Spots for Middlebury Mountain Club-led trips go fast. “They fill up in half an hour or less,” last year’s Head Guide Tess Sneeringer ’14.5 said. “That’s a new phenomenon we’ve seen over the past couple years.”

Established in 1931, the Middlebury Mountain Club (MMC) is the College’s largest student organization. The MMC organizes immensely popular free hiking, boating, climbing and winter trips at all levels of difficulty in the Adirondacks, Vermont and beyond, promoting engagement with and appreciation for the outdoors among the student body.

Sneeringer, who got involved during her first semester on campus, says that although the MMC does a lot more than the trips, they have been the Club’s focus.

“The center mission is to get students out,” she said. “We do a day hike or overnight [trip] every weekend of the school year.”

The MMC has a mailing list over 1,500, and a significant portion of the student body participates in its trips.

“[We don’t get] a ton of athletes because they don’t have weekends [but we do have] a good group of international students because they don’t go home,” Sneeringer said. “A lot of people go on day hikes ... it drops off in the winter because there are fewer people. If they have an interest in the outdoors and a means to go, they’ll go, which is why a lot of people go.”

Sneeringer believes that the trips are so popular because they are very accessible.

“We’ve led open trips, no experience necessary,” she said. “We use an online sign up program,” she said. “We provide outdoor program gear from the gear room, so all you need is appropriate clothing and hiking boots. It’s all paid for.”

Another reason why the trips are enticing, Sneeringer suggests, is that they offer the chance to meet and bond with fellow students outside and away from campus.

“A group of random participants down to spend time in the woods,” she said. “That’s a huge draw. They don’t know who else is going. You get to know new people and talk to people literally in the woods. Mountain Club was the way I got out.”

Sneeringer also points out that the trips raise students’ awareness of the local and larger environment: “It’s about knowing the state, knowing Route 7 beyond Burlington and Lake Dunmore,” she said. “It’s a fuller way to embrace where you’re going to live for four years, in a place where you’re probably never going to live outside. They get to see a little bit more of Vermont out there. I’ve definitely seen places I wouldn’t have known about if I hadn’t gone on my trips or friends’ trips.”

“Being outside is awesome, so of course people would love to do that,” Current Head Guide Kent Ratliff ’16 said. “I think that the campus, surrounded by two beautiful mountain ranges and being well-known for outdoor enthusiasm, has a lot of emphasis on the outdoors. So that in and of itself encourages people who haven’t been outdoors to go out more.”

The MCC welcomes students by hosting open events at Brooker House.

“We advertise and make it easy to sign up for trips. We have a solid presence on campus with events. Pumpkin Tumble is coming soon. We do Fireside on Friday nights at least once a month. It helps quite a bit that the Mountain Club has a designated building, Brooker House. Trying to make that location as open and welcoming as possible, I hope, brings a lot of people in,” Ratliff said.

Unlike other outdoor programs on campus, the MMC is completely student-run. Each trip is planned and led by two or three guides who have trained under veteran guides and in collaboration with the College’s MiddView and February Outdoor Orientation (FOO) programs. To ensure that they are safe and sustainable, trips in the Adirondacks take about eight participants, while those in the Green Mountains take about ten. Ratliff coordinates all the trips and makes certain that the leaders are aware of all the necessary policies.

The majority of trips last one day or overnight; the longest last from four days to a week. Most trips, Sneeringer says, have gone smoothly.

“It’s been relatively incident-free,” she said. “People can get into sticky situations, but they’ve gotten themselves out. [As a guide], it’s pretty cool to influence someone’s confidence … in an activity they’ve never done. It’s really rewarding on both ends.”

Ratliff, who was encouraged to join the MMC by the MMC guides, directed his Outdoor Introduction for New Kids (OINK) orientation trip and went on to coordinate FOO as a Sophomore, shares a similar perspective on guiding trips.

“The outdoors is important for me,” he said. “I like being the one to make that available for more people, because it could also be important to them. One of my favorite things is being able to reach out to people who haven’t had any outdoor experience.”