“It helps people learn more about the outdoors, hiking, it’s just fun, and it builds connections with others,” Indira Stone, a Berkeley High School freshman, said in reference to the importance of the Backpacking Club.
As the club enters its second year at BHS, backpacking leadership focuses on creating experiences in the outdoors that aren’t generally available day to day.
The club is a small group of students who love to hike, camp, and be outdoors. Stone was intrigued by the club because of a backpacking trip she went on over the summer with her family.
Cade Vix, a BHS senior who is a co-leader and founder of the Backpacking Club, shared how the idea of the club started with Nikhil Gomez, a BHS junior. “Dude, we both like backpacking, we should go on a trip together,” Vix said as he told the story, “And then we said, ‘what if, instead of just going on a trip together, we actually went on a trip with a ton of people, and made an actual club about backpacking?’”
BHS junior and Backpacking president Annika Silverstrim said that while most of the planning for the club is a group effort, they each have their own specific tasks as well. “I manage stuff for the Club Fair, try to get people to recruit,” Silverstrim said. Gomez, Vix and Silverstrim all play a big role in keeping the club together and organizing the trip.
Vix explained that they try to get help from the Parent Teacher Student Association to support students in getting the gear needed to participate in trips.
With any club there are always going to be challenges that the leaders will have to overcome. “Just organizing a trip is hard. There’s a lot of things for a lot of people. Food and equipment, those are not even that bad,” Vix said, “But one of the really hard ones is getting people places. You can’t really go backpacking in Tilden, you have to go out somewhere cool, and just getting people three hours away by car is definitely a challenge.”
In case of emergencies, Gomez has a device capable of reaching help from any location. “It’s called a Garmin Inreach Messenger. It’s a device where, no matter where you are, you can send texts and call emergency services,” Gomez said.
Silverstrim, Vix and Gomez explained that they always have a basic first aid kit with them on trips. They also routinely do gear checks to make sure everything is secure and well-fitted.
Unlike other clubs at BHS, students are not at a desk or somewhere in Berkeley. The Backpacking Club gives students the option of doing something different and possibly outside of their comfort zone.
“I think it is important to grow up with nature and to have respect for your environment and for its existence. I really do believe that it’s really developmentally important and it’s also just calming in general,” Silverstrim said.