The biggest trip of the year is coming soon — skiing at Perfect North Slopes. Powers said that some students join the club just to go on the ski trip and sometimes the head count is as high as 50 students. A trip to Yellowstone National Park is also on the schedule for the spring.

“The biggest benefit for the students is to experience the outdoors — to get them away from computers and staying indoors,” he said. “They always have a great time and meet new people. I love the outdoors, and we experience some new things camping out for the first time together.”

Of course, planning outdoor activities is always a gamble. Weather can often ruin the most well-planned events.

“We’ve been pretty lucky with conditions so far,” Powers said. “Sometimes students on camping trips don’t waterproof their tents and wake up in the middle of a pond shivering or they decide to sleep outside and wake up to find they are covered in frost. That’s always fun to watch.”

This year he actually ran into unusual circumstances because of a language barrier. In the middle of the caving experience, the German exchange student who accompanied the club yelled out that this was not what she had signed up for. Come to find out she thought they were supposed to visit rabbits in cages.

“The best part is watching them experience something for the first time,” Powers said. “On our rock climbing trip there were several students who were afraid of heights. Watching them overcome their fears with a small climb and then the second day actually doing a 100-foot rappell – just seeing them walk up to the top, look down, step off and rappel down was pretty neat to watch.”