Outdoor Adventures provides escape
By Bridget O'Brien
May 15, 2003 9:00 p.m.
TOPOCK GORGE, Calif. “”mdash; Erica Shugart has spent a lot of
time in the water. Since age eight she has been swimming
competitively, the past four years for the UCLA team. But last
weekend, she learned some new water skills.
Along with nine other students, Shugart, a fourth-year art
history student, learned to kayak in the Colorado River’s
Topock Gorge.
“If I was competing (on the swim team) next year,
I’d be training right now,” Shugart said. As a
graduating senior, she finally has free time for non-swimming
activities.
Organized by UCLA Outdoor Adventures and offered through the
Wooden Center, the three-day trip is one of many wilderness
endeavors that give students not only a chance to learn some new
skills but also a chance to get away from the daily grind of
student life.
“You don’t want to go back to the real world,”
said Marcella Yu, a first-year chemical engineering graduate
student. Yu has now been on three Outdoor Adventures trips.
“It’s a lot easier than trying to organize
everything with a bunch of friends.”
Yu and other participants agreed that the guiding style sets the
tone: Everyone gets involved and everyone makes decisions. Though
five Outdoor Adventure guides accompanied the 10 participants, no
one stood out as “in charge.”
“Group guiding gives a different vibe. People have more
fun,” said Brandon Jones, a UCLA alumnus who has been a guide
for Outdoor Adventures since 1999.
“This is a training program. It gives people with less
seniority more decision-making opportunities they wouldn’t
have with just one person in charge,” Jones said.
Most of the the guides are volunteers or are paid a small
stipend.
“We pay our guides in training and in access to the
equipment and to the community,” said Dave Eisenberg, Outdoor
Adventure’s program coordinator.
Stacy Shaw, an Outdoor Adventures guide and fourth-year
psychology student, said the low pay has benefits for
participants.
“It means that the people (Outdoor Adventures) attracts
are people that want to teach and love the outdoors, not make
money,” Shaw said.
Nearly all Outdoor Adventures trips are geared toward beginners,
and last weekend’s kayaking trip was no different. The first
day of the trip, after a six-hour drive to the Arizona border, was
sent learning basic kayaking strokes and rescue procedures.
Participants needed that introduction before the 19-mile
down-river paddle on day two.
“I got so frustrated at first because I couldn’t go
straight,” said Yu. “But now I want to go on another
kayak trip.”
Alejandro Veen, a graduate student from Germany studying at
UCLA, said the trip helped him to see more of the country, but did
find one fault.
“The downside is we can’t have beer,” he said.
“The up-side is that they organize everything very
well.”
