f you're looking for a little entertainment outside the bars and music scene, adventures wait for you around Bloomington and beyond.\n That's what three IU students found out during a weekend of camping and ice climbing. Seniors Jon David and Chris Hayes and junior Ryan Anderson had all been rock climbing before, but this was different.\n "When you're up 30 or 40 feet, what you have to do is kick your crampons into the ice, and that's all that's holding you up," says Hayes. "It's a little nerve-racking."\n It's like rock climbing, Hayes says, except climbers can choose where to put handholds and footholds because the face of the rock was covered with four to five inches of ice. \n "It was intimidating to learn the equipment at first, but after a trial run, I was used to it," David says, "It was a matter of trust." With crampons, a plate with metal spikes that attaches to climbing boots, and ice axes in each hand, the climber never actually touches the ice, he says, and he had to trust the equipment.\n David credits graduate student Tom Stuessy of the IU Outdoor Adventures with teaching the group climbing techniques. Stuessy and assistant Derek Mills, also a graduate student, taught the class knots and techniques used on the climb and during the camp setup.\n Stuessy and Mills work at IU Outdoor Adventures, which supplied the training and equipment for the outdoor recreation class that the students enrolled in through the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation.\n The members of the class met on two dates before the trip. The first was spent in a classroom discussing equipment, and during the second, the class went to Hoosier Heights climbing gym to practice.\n Anderson is a rock climber, but he didn't know how to use an ice ax or crampons. After his experience, he says he's comfortable going out to climb ice on his own.\n The class went to Dodge State Park in Wisconsin. It arrived early Friday evening and set up camp. Anderson went with the group leader to check out the site. They were supposed to climb a frozen waterfall, but decided it was unsafe. Instead, they would climb a nearby cliff covered with frozen ice.\n After rising early and eating a quick breakfast, the group members set out for the climb. First they practiced setting up anchors on trees, and the two group leaders checked and graded them. One showed them how to use the ice ax, burying it just deep enough to not waste energy pulling it out.\n After lunch and the ice pick demonstration, the ropes were set into place, and the nine began the 30- to 50-foot climb. It only took five or 10 minutes to get to the top, Anderson says, so they climbed it several times and also climbed another more vertical ascent.\n Tired, they returned to the campsite before nightfall and had hot cocoa around a Duraflame log fire. They rose Sunday and climbed at the same spots until around noon. Anderson found time to go off by himself on a trail along a creek bed and take pictures. \n "After I went on that trip, I would feel comfortable doing it on my own," he says. "I'm already a rock climber; now I know how to do ice ax placement. It's a good class to take if you want to decide whether or not ice climbing is for you"\n But you don't have to take a class to participate in a weekend adventure. IUOA trips take place Friday through Sunday and include rock climbing, horseback riding, camping and whitewater rafting. One adventure is hiking in North Carolina in the Great Smoky Mountains and includes an 80-foot slide down a river chute.
HIGH IN THE SKY\n Junior Tracey Parker, who says she is adventurous at heart, went rock climbing and rappelling through IUOA and hiking in Hoosier National Forest twice. She signed up for dog sledding, but it was canceled because not enough people signed up. The first thing that caught her eye, though, was the one-day skydiving trip to Greencastle, Ind.\n Everyone in the plane jumped one by one without panicking, Parker says. She was one of the last to go. "It's strange because I don't actually remember ever looking out the airplane and looking down," she says. "It happened that quick."\n She says she felt the air rush against her as she fell. When the parachute opened, she and her instructor, who was attached to her, were suddenly swept up, and then began a calm, relaxed descent. \n "The strangest feeling is when you look down, you don't feel like you're floating. It's almost like you're standing on a picture of the ground below you. You don't feel like you're falling because it's so slow," she says. There was no sense of time.\n The jump took about 45 seconds. The group was nervous but excited to go because the members had to wait while the instructors completed a practice jump. After a short instruction where the harnesses were attached and they were shown how to hold themselves in the air and how to land, the students and instructors climbed into the plane. \n "As you're rolling past the runway, you see the runway going by faster," she says. "Then all of a sudden you feel the plane tilting, and you think 'Oh, this is it."
