Listen to our first episode of Curious Clubs as we interview the UCLA Excursion Club and learn about the great outdoors!

William Gauvin: I’m William Gauvin, and this is Curious Clubs, a Daily Bruin podcast that explores the many different and unique clubs here at UCLA. For today’s episode, I will be interviewing Grace Miller, a fourth-year environmental science major, co-founder and co-president of Excursion Club, alongside Payton Fitzpatrick a fourth-year business economics and public affairs major, also co-founder and co-president. This episode was recorded during week eight of the 2026 winter quarter.

Welcome to Curious Clubs! Today I am with the…

Payton Fitzpatrick: Excursion Club at UCLA.

WG: We are so happy to have you here! I think just to start things off, if you could give us a little introduction of what the UCLA Excursion Club is.

Grace Miller: Yeah, of course. So for the UCLA Excursion Club, we do all sorts of outdoor adventures. We do hiking, camping, canoeing, kayaking, skiing, snowboarding, so all sorts of stuff in the outdoors, that’s our club.

PF: Yeah, and to add on to that, like the goal of our club is to try and get as many people outdoors as possible and at low cost, because we want to try and make it accessible to everybody.

WG: How long has the UCLA Excursion Club been around for?

PF: Great question, we started two years ago, two or three years ago, our sophomore year.

WG: And what was the initial idea behind, ‘Hey, let’s create an Excursion Club here?’

GM: Yeah, we felt like there was a gap on campus, and I know there’s other outdoors clubs, but still like a lot of students wanting to go on trips, and there’s maybe not enough spots for them in the other clubs. We also wanted to create a club that encapsulated all sorts of outdoor activities and wasn’t more specific because I know we have like skiing clubs and backpacking clubs, but we wanted Excursion Club to encompass everything and allow students to sort of explore new outdoor activities. So that was kind of the original idea behind it.

WG: So rather than tailoring to a specific activity because I know we have a backpacking club and then as you mentioned, we have a ski club, your Excursion Club is trying to gather all of those under one roof?

PF: Correct, and that brings like a lot of really fun people together who have different specialties or interests in the outdoors, which is super fun.

WG: That’s nice! And what have been some of the more memorable excursions you’ve gone on, say in just the past quarter or the past year?

PF: I would say our staff retreat is always my favorite. We just went in the fall, we went to Big Pine and did like a nice trail, like a long hike. That was super fun! I just love everybody on staff and so it’s so fun to hang out with them. I don’t know, there’s been some bigger trips we did. We went to Zion, Yosemite, those were great.

GM: Yeah, to add on to that, we just went to Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona, which was like a really big endeavor. It was our first backpacking trip, it was our first trip to Arizona. It was like 4 days, super exciting. We got to see the cactuses, they were like twenty, thirty feet tall. And I met a ton of new people, they were all super excited. It was some people’s first excursion with Excursion Club, which is always really great to see that we are getting people out in the outdoors and giving them that opportunity. So that’s been my favorite from this past quarter that we’ve gone on.

WG: And typically how many students are on these trips, especially when it’s a little bit further, say Yosemite, or Saguaro, as you mention?

GM: For Saguaro, it was 11 people, so a smaller trip, like we took two cars. But for other trips, we do upwards of like, I wanna say 20 or 30 people. I think we’re leading a Big Sur trip, or our trip leads are not, not us, but we’re doing a Big Surf trip this quarter that’s taking 30 people. So it really depends on how much funding we get, how many drivers we have, how far away it is. I know Peyton’s done some day hikes, which are, I don’t know, you bring more people there.

PF: Yeah, day hikes are easier to plan. It just depends on, yeah, like exactly what Grace mentioned, logistics and funding.

WG: Yeah, oftentimes that is one of the challenges, especially outdoor activities with the gear that can be expensive. How do you navigate funding and trying to keep costs as low as possible for students?

GM: Yeah, so for funding, we have a lot of help from UCLA. We apply to a couple of different grants every quarter. So we have the TGIF funding, which helps us with the sustainability aspects of our club, and then we also have contingency funding for each trip, which helps us with gas, campsites and food. So all of the funding that we get from UCLA really helps lower costs for students. And then in terms of gear, we bring a lot of our own gear to help supplement what people need. So we’re bringing tents, stoves, things like that, and we help source extra sleeping bags, sleeping pads for students who might not have the gear they need to go on the excursion.

PF: That was nicely put! We also do like our own fundraising. So we did a fundraising campaign last spring, and we’re going to be doing one again in the spring as well. Mostly just friends and family who are donating, but that’s a big help.

WG: That’s interesting! And how do you attract new members to this club?

PF: Oh, well, we try and get out on social media, I think it is a big one. We did a “Good Morning UCLA” video, that was super fun. We got a lot of people to join after that. Other collabs with different clubs like we’re doing, California Challenge this spring quarter with the snow team and Surf Club. Yeah, flyering on, on the, or not flyering, what’s it called?

GM: EAF…

PF: That was great. It was so fun. Everyone came up.

WG: Yes, the EAF, the Enormous Activities Fair at the beginning of every academic year, I believe. Are there any unique challenges that come with Excursion Club or just managing on a day to day basis?

PF: Off the top of my head, one of the challenges we have is always funding. Getting enough funding and then going through the funding process, how we apply and then submit requisitions to get our money back. That is always super difficult and it’s also hard because since the way our club is structured, each trip lead, like for each trip, they are responsible for their own funding for the most part. And so, spreading the information on how everyone is supposed to be doing the funding is also, some things get lost in translation. So there’s a lot, I would say like, as a club, that would be our hardest, the hardest part because everything else is super fun. Like we’re planning trips and going to cool places, so I would say the funding is, that’s difficult.

GM: I agree with that. Funding is probably the most difficult and time consuming. I would say another smaller challenge is just like trips require a lot of coordination, so like coordinating gear, making sure we have enough tents, making sure we have drivers, organizing pickups, drop offs, all of that, can be more time-consuming than it originally might seem and just like getting the trip going takes a takes a lot of work and build up, but everything else, as Peyton said, is just super fun time.

PF: I would add one more thing. I think we’re also like, we’re really not looking at the difficulty because I feel like all of our trip leads are really competent, but I will say you have to make sure things are safe too. Not that that’s a problem that we’ve, we’ve had, but like, I feel like that should also be said.

WG: And so you mentioned that all of your trip leads are extremely competent. What’s the selection process behind that, if you can take us through?

PF: Yeah, so, we put out general applications. We did this in the beginning of this quarter, and then people apply, and then we kind of go from there with an interview and really assessing the skills and the mindset they’re bringing to the club, because we want people who are embodying our mission and our goals. But yeah, I don’t know, what else do you want to add on to that?

GM: Also, when selecting, because Excursion Club is trying to bring in all these diverse activities, we also love to pull in new staff members that bring new activities to the table. So, this past application cycle, we have a new staff member who does a lot of climbing, we have a staff member who does canoeing. So, it’s really great to have those specialties brought into the club because I personally am not a climber, I’ve canoed a little bit, but I don’t have that skill set. So, we really like to pull in people who have these diverse activities.

WG: Interesting, and then are there any activities specifically that you have on the horizon that you want to add to Excursion Club?

PF: Well, we really want to go whitewater rafting. I don’t know, I feel like we have a good mix.

GM: Okay, the first would be snowshoeing, we’re really, really interested in snowshoeing. I think it’s even on our club description online, but we haven’t yet embarked on a snowshoeing trip. Also, if the Bruin Sport Fishing Club would want to collab, we would love to go sport fishing.

WG: Do you have any other expansion projects in the future or are you trying right now to kind of establish a foothold?

PF: I think we’re always trying to expand, in order to offer more trips for people and kind of hold ourselves accountable for saying that we want to have accessible access to the outdoors. And so, in that sense, yes, we’re like always trying to get more trips running, closer trips, easier trips for people to get onto, so, yeah.

GM: One of our trip leads as well mentioned, she’s going into the medical field mentioned, and she would love to do a wilderness first aid type seminar, because as Peyton said, it can be hard for people to commit to a weekend long trip or something like that. So she mentioned wanting to run a seminar about wilderness for aid, maybe on campus or on a Zoom, just teaching people about that and giving them the skills they would need to, like recreate in the outdoors even if they can’t come on a trip with us.

PF: Also, one more thing to add, this quarter we’ve done two trail restoration excursions, and I love that, and I think that we’ll continue to do more things that are giving back to nature and what we’re using.

WG: And how often do you try to plan these trips? Is it every two to three weeks? How does it work? Because I’m assuming it must be a lot of just logistics and overall a lot of planning.

GM: Well, sort of how we structure it, we have, I think in the 20-something trip leads, and each trip lead is responsible for leading one trip per quarter, whether that’s a day hike, an overnight trip. So before every quarter starts, we have them send in their trips, the dates they want to do, where they want to go, so that we can sort of coordinate funding and see where the funding will need to go for what trips. It’s not necessarily like every two weeks or every three weeks.

It’s kind of based on our trip lead schedules because we want it to be flexible for them. I think this quarter we had pretty much a trip every weekend. We had some weekends that had like two or three trips and we have maybe like one or two weekends that don’t have trips, but typically we have like two trip leads running a trip and we have 20-something trip leads, but we’re hoping to expand to even more trips in the spring.

WG: You can cater to both the beginners who are like, ‘Oh, I want to get into hiking or just want to see if this is kind of a hobby I want to get into,’ and the more advanced people who can, like, backpack and who are more nature savvy.

GM: Yeah, absolutely. We have some day hikes which cater more to beginners or to people who don’t have enough time to do a full overnight trip, and we do try to cater to all different levels. Like we do some kayaking in Marina del Rey that’s very chill and relaxed, and then something like the Saguaro backpacking trip would be a little bit more intense, where you’re going out into the mountains, you’re backpacking like 14 or so miles, you’re cooking in the backcountry, you’re carrying your gear in, but we do try to make it accessible to all types of people, so beginners, experts, there is a trip for everyone with our club.

WG: And if you could use just one word to describe your club, you have someone just walk up to you and ask, ‘Oh, what is Excursion Club?’ and you can only use one word, which would you choose?

PF: Well the first one that came to mind was fun, but that’s probably not a good descriptor of what the club does.

GM: The first word that came to mind was electric. Second word would be just adventure. We go on so many different types of adventures, and that word I think really encapsulates all that we do.

PF: I feel like I don’t know if this is a cop out, but excursion. I feel like excursion, I love the name because it just has like, you’re going on an excursion. It’s not, it’s like, I don’t know, I feel like it has adventure and fun ingrained in the name, hopefully, that’s how I feel.

GM: Yeah, I agree with that. Excursion can mean so many different things. Yeah, you’re excursion-ing somewhere and it could be anything, could be canoeing, could be snowshoeing, could be skiing, could be hiking, but it just encapsulates what we do, like people are going on excursions and they’re getting outside.

PF: You can excursion anywhere, you can excursion to the grocery store and I feel like it just has a fun undertone.

WG: And what are some of the trips that overall, since Excursion Club has been founded, have just stayed in your hearts and minds just for whatever reason, maybe they were particularly challenging, maybe it was just something unexpected happened and they were a lot of fun nonetheless?

PF: Well, I would say, I don’t know, I really liked our Zion trip. That one was really fun. We went to Zion and Bryce Canyon, and it was so beautiful. Oh, and it was so great because we got the last-minute Angel’s Landing permits, and so we were able to do Angel’s Landing. We found out the night before we got the permit, so it’s super exciting and that was probably one of my favorite hikes that I’ve ever done. So that one was such a great trip and yeah, lots of beautiful sights.

GM: Yeah, I think Zion for me was very memorable. I’d also like to say our first excursion to Death Valley was really fun because it was just Peyton and I. We only had her car, so we could only bring three other people. It was a very small excursion and it was kind of just like testing the water, seeing if everything would work, and it did. We camped, we got to see all the sights. It was a wonderful weekend, beautiful weather, and it kind of showed us, I think, that like, the club could become something and that it was possible to do these excursions. So that one stands out to me as being very memorable and just like a gorgeous area to explore.

WG: Well, thank you for your time, it was great having you.

PF: Thank you so much.

GM: This is really exciting, thanks for having us.

WG: Thank you! This episode of Curious Clubs was brought to you by the Daily Bruin Podcasts, and you can listen to this episode and all other Daily Bruin podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. The audio and transcript of today’s interview are available at dailybruin.com. I’m William Gavin. Thank you for listening.