Outdoor Adventures provides escape

TOPOCK GORGE, Calif. — 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.”