Living the adventure
Highflying adventures take club to next level of excitement
By Brandon Ortiz
skiff staff
It’s a cool October night in Arkansas. After a hard day of hiking down trails with rattle snakes and rappelling down a 70-foot cliff, the High Adventure Club settles around the campfire.
“What was everybody’s favorite part of the day?” a member asks.
One member said hiking on the trails and taking photographs of nature was his favorite.
Another said exploring “Satan’s Maze,” a narrow part of a pitch black cave that is only a couple of feet wide and a challenge even the most daring of spelunkers can struggle with.
After each member has their turn, the group starts to sing around the campfire.
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Special to the Skiff
Members of the High Adventure Club relax around the campfire after a day of rappelling, hiking and caving. |
A few hours earlier, each member had been alone, dangling by a rope on a cliff. Now, they were together safely gathered around the campfire.
Fear and friends go hand in hand
For the High Adventure Club, rappelling down mountains, exploring bat-infested caves, canoeing down fast-flowing rivers and camping out in the middle of nowhere is not just a challenge — it’s a way to make friends.
The two go hand in hand, said Myles Hayes, a senior photography major.
“There is something that makes friendships when you not only have fun outdoors, but when you also challenge yourself outdoors,” Hayes said. “Instead of sitting down in a classroom like we do at TCU, we go out and we learn what our weaknesses are, we learn our strengths and we learn to be leaders. That is where the friendship comes from.
“You learn together. You have fun together.”
The High Adventure Club is an organization that takes camping trips on a bi-weekly basis. The organization spent last weekend rappelling, hiking and exploring caves at Devil’s Den State Park in Arkansas.
The club goes white water rafting, rock climbing, back packing, rappelling, hiking, mountain biking and does various other outdoor activities. This provides members not only a great stress reliever, but also a way to overcome fears and make friends at the same time.
Adventure above and beyond
Co-president Amy Thompson doesn’t like to be scared. The senior French major likes to tackle her fears head-on.
The High Adventure Club allows her to do just that.
“I used to be terrified of heights before I started doing all of this stuff,” Thompson said. “But I hate being scared of things, so I made myself do it until I knew I was not scared anymore. Its a good feeling.”
Dave Wuchner, a senior environmental earth resources major, can relate. Before joining the club, Wuchner also had a terrible fear of heights. After trips spent rock climbing and rappelling, he has, for the most part, overcome that fear. But he still gets a little nervous.
Wuchner said he still remembers the first time he ever rappelled with the club.
“It was very tough standing off a cliff and trusting the (equipment) to hold you there,” he said. “But when I got to the bottom that first time, I was ready to go right back up and do it again.”
Camping trips allow members to not only conquer fear, but to conquer stress as well.
Stacy Stuart, a senior radio-TV-film major, said the trips are an escape.
“Fort Worth is too much city for me; I have to get away sometimes,” Stuart said. “Anything away from TCU is good for me. It’s nice to get completely away from the dumb stuff.”
For Thompson, the trips are important to her.
“To me, it’s really a crucial part of my life to sort of get away from the city life, the rush and meeting deadlines,” she said. “It’s a completely different perspective to sit on top of a mountain and watch a sunset.”
Life and death situations breed trust
The biggest advantage of taking camping trips for Hayes is making friends.
“That is the true advantage,” he said. “You make friends you will always keep in touch with.”
Thompson said members bond because of the trust they have with one another.
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Special to the Skiff
Dave Wuchner, a senior environmental earth resources major, throws out the rappelling line so that the club members can safely maneuver their way to the ground. |
“When I climb over a cliff that is 50 or 100 feet high, the people who I am with have to trust that I know what I am doing, so they are not going to fall to their death,” Thompson said. “You can imagine the types of bonds that form because you are basically trusting your life with one another.”
Co-president Adria Newberry, a senior liberal studies major, said she has never been on a trip where someone didn’t make a friend.
“By the end of the weekend, you are going to be friends with somebody,” she said.
The club attracts different kinds of people.
“It doesn’t take a certain type of person (to join the club),” Newberry said. “Sometimes they are odd people — people who don’t necessarily fit in other places. But everybody is so nice and so laid back that everybody fits in.”
This happened on the club’s trip to Huntsville State Park, Newberry said.
“We had what I thought was the strangest group of people that I didn’t know at all,” she said. “But by the end of the weekend, we knew each other. It’s like that every trip, you always know the people on your trip by the end of the trip.”
The High Adventure Club is one of the reasons Hayes has stayed at TCU, he said.
“Other schools, if they have activities like this, they have 500 members and you have to reserve a space on the trip,” Hayes said. “In this organization, 20 people come to the meetings and 20 people go on the trips. You get to know everybody.”
‘Like opening a closet door after being stuck’
Things don’t always go as planned. The same can be said for the trips.
“The trips are never perfect, but that’s what makes them an adventure,” Stuart said.
On the High Adventure Club’s first experience caving at Enchanted Rock last year, every flashlight went out except one, Hayes said. Members had to line up single file, and pass the lone flashlight back and forth. Some in the back used the light in their watches to light the way.
The cave normally takes an hour and a half to explore. It took the High Adventure Club three hours that day, Hayes said.
“It was funny because nobody was scared,” he said. “But everybody was comfortable with each other at that point. So everybody was goofing around.”
For some, it wasn’t all that fun.
“It was a little scary,” Wuchner said. “You are stuck in a small cave and you want to get out. I got a little claustrophobic.”
Wuchner said he felt relieved after making it through the cave.
“It felt like opening a closet door after being stuck in there for a while,” he said.
The group’s caving experience would not be the only thing to go wrong on the trip.
‘These are the biggest oranges I have ever seen’
Hayes was in charge of buying oranges for the Enchanted Rock trip.
At the grocery store, Hayes stumbled upon what he thought were unusually large oranges.
“They were huge,” he said. “They were the best looking oranges I had ever seen. They were huge, beautiful, plump, ripe oranges.”
For dinner, the club was going to eat macaroni and cheese. But the meal was burned badly and was inedible.
“You couldn’t eat it, really,” Wuchner said. “It was pretty bad.”
All that was left to eat was Hayes’ huge oranges and graham crackers. Hayes opened one up and took a big bite.
It was a grapefruit.
“It’s funny when you have a taste for oranges and you bite into a grapefruit,” he said. “It like drinking water when you thought it was soda.”
Somebody examined the bag the “oranges” came from. In big letters, it said “Florida Grapefruits.”
“It was classic Myles Hayes absent-mindedness,” Hayes said.
Since nobody in the group really cared for grapefruit, club members had a hearty meal of graham crackers that night, Wuchner said.
“Nobody really scarfed it down,” he said.
Back at the campfire
After a round of singing, telling stories and jokes, High Adventure Club members slowly start to head to their tent one by one.
Even after a day spent hiking, rappelling and watching nature, for many singing and playing around the campfire was the best part of the day.
“When you sit down in a group, and you’re in a relaxed state of mind and you’re full from a good meal, you just look back at the challenges you accomplished,” Hayes said. “It’s almost like writing in a journal, where it imbeds it in your mind further and you remember it longer.”
Brandon Ortiz
b.p.ortiz@student.tcu.edu