Canton Air Sports, OH

Canton Air Sports, OH

Hickory Creek, Allegheny National Forest, PA

Mike Jehn, Kevin Qi, Josephine Palencia, Mahin Mahmoodi, Ivan Jager, Glen Williams, and I ended up going to the Hickory Creek wilderness in Northern Pennsylvania in the Allegheny National Forest. The weather was a bit chillier than back in Pittsburgh, with the temperature getting into the low 20s over the night we stayed there. In some places that were well shaded, there was still almost 2 feet of snow! The snow made hiking a bit difficult, but the scenery was absolutely gorgeous because of it.

We also found the trail difficult to hike because often there was not a trail to follow. The park organization has been allowing the trail blazes there to fade, so we invented a game (out of necessity) to find the next blaze to continue the trail. Fun!

We had a nifty campground next to a small river and kept a blazing fire up all night to keep warm and play with while "BSing" for hours.

Some of us returned home earlier the next day while a small group of 3 went to the Kinzua Bridge in the Allegheny National forest which had been literally knocked down over an enormous valley by a past tornado. A previous group from the Explorers club had actually been to this bridge as well.

-D. Stone

Pompano Beach, FL

Pompano Beach, FL

Explorers members who went: Josephine

There were 14 of us divers: (12 men, 2 women). We mostly dove wrecks and drift dives. I did about 4 dives/day (2 morning dives, 2 afternoon dives) for the span of 6-7days.

Highlights of the florida dive:

3 sharks (10 ft, 6 ft, 6 ft) hammerhead, nurse shark, and another hammerhead. 2 giant turtles (around 150-years old) - 4 ft diameter, 3 ft diameter. I swam/hitched a ride with the 2 ft diameter turtle. 2 giant eels (cute photos eh?). 2 huge barracudas (1.5 m and 2.5 m long). The dive master said it's the biggest barracuda he's seen in his 20 years of diving. The huge barracuda occupied the entire hull length of the ship wreck. 2 giant jude fishes as big as bookcases (5 ft x 3 ft) swimming with with 5 ft diameter eel. The boat dive master put some fish bait so there was a meeting of the big creatures on the wreck.

-J. Palencia

Dolly Sods Wilderness Area, WV

After leaving Friday night at about 7 pm, Mike Schantz, Tamar Melman, Erica Spiritos, Nate, and I ended up taking an (unintentional) detour along the wrong interstate for half and hour, but ended up getting to the Dolly Sods wilderness area around 12:30- 1 am. We arrived to an utterly alien area: Dolly Sods, already known for its tundra/alpine like landscape because of the plateau it is on, was pitch black with sustained winds of up to about 30-50 mph or so. Without the thermometer our car told us it was around 20 F, so it was probably around zero with the wind. We set up tents in absolutely freezing weather but had a fantastic view of the stars. We had a cold first night.

It was still around 20-25 F when we woke up and ate some quick and delicious hot oatmeal, but it warmed up to above freezing probably around noon or so. We had a gorgeous hike and were well prepared with our use of layers and constant activity to keep us warm. We sort of got a little lost on the trail but at no harm, as we already knew where the loop would take us back to anyway (it turns out we were just going the wrong direction). The trail often followed a tiny stream bed so we were often hiking on ice- kind of neat! We ended up, by pure coincidence, running into a group of 4 from the University of Maryland and ended up making camp with them on Saturday at a gorgeous stream junction. It was much warmer on Saturday night (probably a low a little bit below freezing) and we were much more comfortable- especially with a well-made campfire, hot chocolate, and a couple packs of Ramon and (not-so-delicious) mac and cheese. We ended up going to bed around 7:30 pm after hiking 8-9 miles or so.

We woke up a little bit before 7 am to try and avoid a potential snow fall. Fortunately, the change in warmer weather meant we were not snowed in that day, and did not even get the freezing rain we expected as well until around 10:30 or so, at which point we were eating lunch at an overlook a bit from the "parking lot" on the forest road we had parked on. We ended up heading home in cold rainy weather around 11 and got back to Pittsburgh around 3:15 pm.

-D. Stone