Mount Holyoke Outing Club Centennial Celebration

” I was an experienced mountaineer when I journeyed three days on the train from Seattle to Holyoke in September 1955. I had been trained in the leadership climbing course of the Seattle Mountaineers, and had ascended many rock, snow, and ice peaks in the Cascades, Olympics, and the Coast Ranges of British Columbia. Negotiating difficult routes and seeing expansive vistas was the thrill of my weekends and my life. I also wanted the thrill of a good education, and for that reason had come to Mount Holyoke. Classmate Janet Imlah, also an outdoors person, explained to me that New England mountains were nothing like the high peaks I knew from the Northwest, but she cautioned me “not to underestimate them.” Indeed. Janet and I joined the Outing Club. as did other friends, Nancy Eastham, Bar Hood, and more. How might we reach the trails and rivers and rocky mountains that were the essence of “outing” since Mount Holyoke prohibited students from having or driving cars on campus? We learned that our dilemma had already been solved by the sagacious faculty advisor to the Outing Club, Miss Beck. The Club owned a station wagon, one of those handsome machines with real wood paneling along the sides. We passed safety tests and carefully earned the right to become outing club drivers. We then could hike and climb in the White Mountains, the Greens, and Adirondacks, and ski and snowshoe throughout New England. The Mount Holyoke Outing Club was a member of IOCA, the Intercollegiate Outing Club Association, and thus our outdoor adventures were often with students from Yale, Williams, Cornell, Syracuse, and other colleges. One Thanksgiving Allison Peters and planned to climb Mt Marcy in the Adirondacks with outing club friends from Cornell. Kind staff in the Mount Holyoke commissary roasted a turkey for us so we could have “real” Thanksgiving in our lean-to campsite. Folk singing and dancing were favorite activities for outing club weekends. I recall one occasion when I invited singer Pete Seeger to give a concert at Mount Holyoke. It was hard for him to bring the music to an end in time for us to make our dorm curfew. One of the true assets of the Mount Holyoke Outing Club was our log cabin high on the steep slope of Mt. Holyoke. It was only a four-mile run from campus, a perfect place for a picnic, or moments of friendship and perspective. Alas, one morning Miss Beck reached me with the terrible news that our cabin had burned down the previous night. A group of us went up there right away. The cabin was gone. Only stones remained, and a sardine can on what had been the floor. We all had ideas of who might have been using the cabin, but no amount of speculation could bring it back. For students like me, the Mount Holyoke Outing Club provided numerous opportunities for outdoor experiences, skills, and fellowship. I have worked professionally for over 50 years in the field of environmental protection, and outing club was a valued building block to my motivation and ability to find successful trails. ” – Sharon Shirley Francis ’59