What is this?

Winter sports are fun, but they often carry more risks than 3-season activities. To help the MITOC community stay safe in cold wintry conditions, we run safety lectures to help prepare people for the risks they'll face outside. Normally this is only run as part of winter school in January, but we're hoping to help new active members of MITOC get a foothold in winter activities in November and December as they become available (before safety lectures run again in January).

Prerequisites

No real prerequisites other than being free to show up :-). There is no fitness or prior skill requirement!

Where and when?

This lecture will take place on campus in room 3-270 from 10:00am to 4:00pm on Sunday November 3rd, with a lunch break in-between.

Is this mandatory?

In order to participate with MITOC during winter conditions (which is often well into spring for the higher summits), you must have attended a delivery of the winter safety lectures. The "trip" will be broken into 2 parts: lecture and then a short quiz. You must attend the lecture and pass the quiz at the end.

Topics covered

• MITOC policies
• Clothing
• Basic gear
• Hiking
• Traction
• Gear rentals
• Weather
• and more!

Why the November edition?

As a safety measure, MITOC requires everyone to attend Winter safety lectures (the first week of IAP’s 4 week Winter School). This happens usually during the first week of January. Every year we have 600+ participants who join us for these lectures to be outside with MITOC in winter, however, often many are unable to participate because they are still coming back from their vacation/other personal reasons. To make winter more accessible, we are offering a lecture in November which can be used to satisfy winter safety requirements, participate in winter school, and also hike with MITOC when winter arrives in November/December. If you are planning to attend safety lectures during Winter School in January (7th and 9th, 7-9 pm), you do not need to attend these unless you haven't attended winter safety lectures before and want to go on any winter hikes that may happen before the new year.

TL;DR:

You need to have attended winter safety lectures to do outside winter activities with MITOC. If you haven't attended the winter safety lectures before, this is your opportunity!