Take a hike with the Outdoor Recreation Program
They are limited by a government agency, for now, in the activities they can do. But that doesn’t keep the Outdoor Recreation Program from providing USU students with opportunities to utilize the outdoors scene around them.
ORP Program Coordinator Brian Shirley said the Logan River branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service currently limits the organization from conducting activities within the Wasatch-Cache-Uinta National Forest lands during the non-winter months, for conservation purposes.
Paul Jones, an ORP employee, said the ORP is also defined as a commercial company and thus has to pay heftier fees for outings such as whitewater rafting trips. The fees, he said, ought to instead be significantly lower for the ORP, because they are a non-profit organization designed primarily for students.
Jones said the ORP now requires $65 for an eight-mile guided float by Mad River.
“What college student is going to pay $65 for a whitewater trip?” Jones, a USU senior psychology major, asked. “We could get a lot more students into the mountains if we didn’t have these regulations. Commercial companies are paid to take students out, and they’re making quite a bit of money, but here, we pretty much don’t get anything.”
Shirley said the organization currently utilizes its guides and outfitters permits to operate the Green Canyon and Blind Hollow yurts during the winter, to guide backcountry skiing, snowboarding and snowshoeing trips.
But such snow excursions are merely the tip of the iceberg, Jones said, when it comes to the recreational options the ORP offers.
“If you don’t want to be a hard-core backcountry skier, there are other options for you,” said Jones, who has worked for the ORP for more than two years. “Some events reach a wide collection of students.”
Such events include hikes and trips to the yurts, for purely getaway purposes, without the expectation that participants get their Bode Miller on, he said.
“Some activities, all you have to do is walk,” Jones added.
A portion of student registration fees funds a $20 of ORP credit, Shirley said, so students should take advantage of activities such as the Oct. 6 kayak roll clinic at the HPER building pool.
The kayak roll clinics themselves have been a point of struggle for the organization, Shirley added. The university does not permit the kayaks used at the HPER building to be used outdoors. This restriction prompted Shirley, who has been program coordinator since summer, to survey outdoor programs at other universities, concerning the degree of limitations encountered with equipment like the kayaks, he said.
University of Wyoming and Oregon State University have programs that are permitted to take the clinic kayaks outside of the campus pools, provided they apply basic anti-bacterial cleaners to the kayaks, he reported.
Considering a basic, two-person kayak can cost $200 or more, using the same kayak both in training and applied outdoors purposes provides savings Shirley said he would like to see implemented at USU.
“It would really help us with a tight budget,” Shirley said. “Let alone how it can better use student fees, ultimately.”
The spring semester activities are already in discussion. Shirley said he hopes to take about 30 student volunteers to Moab, Utah, for outdoor recreation, during spring break. While there he said he plans to have the team remove tamarisk, or salt cedar, a pervasive, non-indigenous plant species that has spread up and down the Colorado River Corridor.
“It’s pretty impressive if students want to help,” said Rebecca Manners, a graduate student specializing in geomorphic and vegetative feedback in the Colorado River Basin. “It’s not an easy species to take out. You have to remove the roots to purge it completely, but it’s not easy to get past the branches because it’s so thick.”
Tamarisk was introduced by biological engineers from the Army Corps of Engineers, in the 1800s, in an effort to stabilize an area of soil that was eroding due to river silt depository.
Shirley emphasized the importance of abiding by the Forest Service’s current policies.
“It is important to the ORP that we abide by these standards, and we encourage other groups on campus to do so as well,” he said.
– rhett.wilkinson@aggiemail.usu.edu