Youth & Families

We are always interested in activities for youth and families, and love to have members help coordinate an event. If you have ideas, contact one of the board members or attend a Board or Member meeting to share your visions. Thank you!

 

  

      

                   

Is California Alpine Club a place for kids?    YES!!
by John Hannum, Past President

Come to one of our functions and you’ll see:  well-aged and wrinkled members reminiscing about hikes of yesteryear, and sharing tales of the latest orthopedic surgery.  But wait … once overheard from a pair of pre-teens near the registration desk at Echo Summit Lodge:  “Mom, can we go jump on the beds now?”  Well, no, we don’t jump on these beds; but let me tell you about a great, easy hike to a neat little lake for some afternoon swimming … those kids paid attention and were soon off to an adventure at Lake Audrain. On the way, they learned about the Pony Express riders who traversed this region in the 1860s; some lucky kids were on the scene for the annual re-enactment, where local horsemen (and horsewomen) gallop over the trail with mailbags being relayed to Sacramento.  Good stuff; you can’t get this at school or off a video game.

Then there were three generations of a Member’s family who joined a club-sponsored, week-long hike into the Ansel Adams Wilderness; not only did the kids learn to share in camp-site chores, they were fitted with helmets and proper shoes and were schooled in rock-climbing and rappelling by one of the fully-certified Dads.  The next day, those same kids helped their elders “bag” Madera Peak – where they entered their names on a Hikers Register that had been placed up there on top, many years ago by–guess who?–Members of California Alpine Club.

We Love Echo Summit Lodge

One of the guiding principles of the Club’s Echo Summit Lodge is to provide affordable accommodations for Members and their kids—and that principle is realized almost every week of the year.

To promote the “ownership” which is so important to all-volunteer clubs, the CAC bylaws provide for a special class of “student” membership:  open to full-time students who are between eighteen and twenty-three years of age; such members have all rights of membership except that of holding office and they enjoy waiver of entrance fees.

Is CAC for kids?  Yes it is—in the best of contexts—when they are part of the larger family of membership.