The author on a fall SUP excursion with LPX. (Photo: Mr. Jim Dingle)
While the winter recreational sports program has ended and with it it’s always fun acronym “wRECk”, its successor is here in the form of year round lake placid experience. This however isn’t the first change in recent memory, just a few years, before even the current upperclassmen arrived, the entire program revolved around Whiteface and getting students who had never been skiing or snowboarding and students who had perhaps never even seen snow to get out and experience it. Everyone was required to go to the mountain at least four days a week and this continued throughout the winter season. Since then the program evolved to a mix of Whiteface, the fitness center, activities in the gym and the occasional added option. This year, however, produced the most sweeping change with the arrival of the new Headmaster. While Whiteface is still always an option (assuming you can handle the lack of snow so far), students are split into groups with each group doing a different activity each day.
Whether it’s a hike around the many trails of the campus with Dingle or floor hockey with Mr. Roy, this year it’s a different option every day. There’s been mountain biking, hot yoga, community service, bouldering. The unusually warm fall has also led to paddleboarding and kayaking on the lake. Outside of the usual, there have also been a couple new adventures like experiencing the new rail-trail where the group traveled out to Lake Clear and peddled the six miles back to Saranac Lake with small four person bikes on the recently abandoned railroad. With the possibility of the rail’s removal next year, it was a lucky break for the new program, as this might have been the rail-bikes’ first and last year.
Before the opening of Whiteface, there was also the chance to paddleboard all the way into town on the windiest and waviest week of fall and the chance to see Mr. Portal show off his bouldering skills on top of Owl’s Head. Whiteface won’t mean the end of trips. In the future, ice climbing, skating, and tubing should all be possible while still having Whiteface as an option. With suggestions from both the students and teachers, the program shouldn’t run out of ideas any time soon.
Teagan Grisi ’17
