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Backpacking

About the Excursion Club

General

The Excursion Club is a completely student-run organization that is based on the UCSB campus. We organize all sorts of outdoor activities throughout the year, from single-day events to multi-day trips. Difficulty of the trips range from laid back to extremely demanding, depending on the nature of the activity. You can see pictures from our most recent trips on our gallery page and a list of upcoming trips on the calendar

The Excursion Club is not an outfitter or a guide service. None of our officers or trip leaders are paid to lead trips, they do it because they love the activities they lead. We are able to organize relatively inexpensive trips because all of the costs are shared among everyone that goes. All of the membership fees collected are used to purchase club equipment, fund social events for club members, and a small portion is used to purchase flyers and other administrative supplies. Members are able to borrow equipment for Excursion Club trips at no cost. Current equipment includes: backpacks, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, backpacking stoves, tarps, tents, snowshoes, ice axes, surfboards, wetsuits, rock climbing equipment, kayaking equipment, walkie-talkies, and a GPS.

In addition to the activites that we have pages for, we also offfer other events less frequently. These include social events, horseback riding, mountain biking, scuba diving, and spearfishing.

Education

We do our best to educate our members on every activity we do while we're out there doing it. If you're a beginner we can bring you up to speed and if you're advanced we still have people who can teach you a few tricks. You don't have to be an expert in anything to try it out with our club. Although not all of our trip leaders are certified in the activites they organize, we only allow people we feel have enough experience and responsibility to lead trips.

The Excursion Club also offers oppurtunites to gain trip leading experience. Trip leaders are always happy to have people help them out when planning a trip, and are able to offer practical advice. If you are interested in learning how to run trips yourself, contact whoever leads the trips you are interested in.

Environmental

Seeing as we love to enjoy the great outdoors as much as possible, it only makes sense that we are also involved with protecting it. We follow Leave No Trace practices when we are in the wilderness, and are happy to teach you if you are unfamiliar with them. As a way to conserve gas and also ruduce the cost of trips, carpools are organized by the trip leaders so that the fewest possible number of vehicles are taken. Our belief is that most people are passionate about proctecting the natural beauty of the planet, they just don't know it until they experience that beauty firsthand. Our goal is to share that experience with as many people as possible.

In the Spring of 2007 the Excursion Club became one of the first groups on the UCSB campus to become carbon-neutral. We use a portion of the membership fees generated to purchase carbon credits that offset the amount of carbon dioxide that we produce by driving to and from trip locations. Last year we offset 60 tons of carbon dioxide. For more information, visit www.terrapass.com.

Sponsorship

In addition to gaining entrance to all our events, being a member gives you the benefit of discounts of 10% at our sponsors. Current sponsors include: Santa Barbara Outfitters, Paddle Sports of Santa Barbara,and Backcountry.com. Check out our Sponsors Page for more information.