The treacherous climb, endless miles looming ahead, begins for the seniors. The real question is: will they make it?
Each year the senior class embarks on two trips: WSC to the Grand Canyon and VWS to Yosemite National Park. On these trips students are given the opportunity to hike over 16 miles with their classmates to symbolize bringing everyone together one last time.
However, is it really bringing everyone together if most people cannot complete the long journey due to lack of preparation?
Webb offers three different hikes on these trips: a short, medium, and long hike. If you end up doing the short hike, you get fewer pretty views and a job as a pizza delivery service for your fellow classmates on the long hike, as pizza is their reward for completing the hike.
Before embarking on these hikes, seniors are required to do a large number of practice hikes, as well as a pack test to qualify for either the medium or long hike.
“I kind of wanted to do the long hike, but I haven’t been able to do any of the practice hikes, so I don’t really know,” Kenny Clay (‘25) said.
The short practice hike consists of a minimum of two hours and four miles, while the long practice hike is a minimum of five hours and eight miles with significant elevation gain.
While it makes sense for seniors to be required to take these hikes to physically and mentally prepare for the senior trip, some scheduling conflicts have been difficult for the seniors to accomplish the practice hikes. Specifically, people who are religious have conflicts on Sundays as the hikes fall during church.
“We try to offer as many hikes as we can, so everybody has a fair chance,” said Mark Lauer, humanities department faculty and practice hike facilitator. “People have church things going on, and we respect that.”
Some seniors say that the reason why they cannot attend is because they do not get enough notice in time to make time for the hikes.
“I can’t go to the one that’s after [spring] break,” Felipe Murillo (‘25) said. “I really want to, but I didn’t know about it until very recently. If there’s more notice, maybe I would have been able to go.”
Because of these difficulties with scheduling, some seniors brainstormed ways that would make it easier to attend.
“I feel like instead of having one [hike] every week for the last like six weeks, maybe there could be one [hike] every month on the calendar that people know about because it’s already scheduled,” Kenny said. “They do [this schedule] with community dinner, so I don’t understand why they can’t do it with hikes too. They only had two before [spring] break, which maybe I should’ve gone on them, but I wasn’t ready for them, and I can’t go to the one that’s after break. After that, I only have just a few weeks left.”
Many seniors are facing similar issues as Kenny, as they have prior commitments on the weekends for club sports, theater rehearsals, or family commitments.
Dr. Lauer explained the reasoning for the current schedule and the behind the scenes that students did not see.
“I think there are regulations that require us to check on the students the ability to hike within a certain amount of time before the hikes happen,” Dr. Lauer said.
If Webb made hikes required weekly similar to community dinner, more students would be able to attend. It would also be helpful for hikes to be offered during an afternoon activity block, so students would also be able to get more hikes in than the current schedule allows.
Now that we are beginning to end the year off, spring activities have just ended on May 8th. Webb students and faculty now have more free time during the weekdays, meaning that some hikes will be scheduled during that time.
“Right now, we have two short hikes and four pack tests scheduled on weekday afternoons,” said Sarah Trobaugh, mathematics department faculty and practice hike facilitator. “We will continue to try to add more options for hikes, but a lot is dependent on the availability of senior advisors to lead them.”
Moving forward, regardless of location, the lead class advisors should alter senior schedules or provide more options for the hike schedule so the many hikes offered do not go to waste as more people would be able to attend
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