There are more than 800 student organizations at the University of Maryland, but few can say they started more than eight decades ago.
Terrapin Trail Club is a group devoted to all things outdoors and one of the oldest student-led groups on campus. What began as a small cohort of students planning impromptu hiking and camping trips has steadily evolved into a massive outdoor community. Hikers, bikers, campers, cavers, kayakers and more join with a main goal in mind — getting people outside.
“If you like to do a thing that isn’t in a building, we can probably hook you up,” said senior mechanical engineering major and president of Terrapin Trail Club Ben Talley.
Terrapin Trail Club t-shirts and stickers worn by members are inscribed with “Est. 1937,” a reminder of the club’s age and the legacy it upholds. Joseph Lavallee, the club’s historian, continues the tradition of keeping trip reports — detailed records that list the locations, activities and participants of each adventure while connecting the club to its past.
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Every week, members look over flashback reports from the past, each cataloguing the week to week outdoor activities of the club throughout the years.
Club Vice President Kyle Bacon said there is humor and handy advice found in decades-old trip reports. He says that “there’s survival hints, and one of them is ‘do not pull down enormous branches without first checking that there’s not rotten logs on top.’”
At a time when many students spend most of their days inside, Kurt Kovacs, secretary of Terrapin Trail Club, says the club provides an outlet for students to take a break from their studies and devices and go outside and explore.
“The engineers need this,” the junior electrical engineering major joked.
Getting outside doesn’t just mean light hikes. Expeditions range near and far for all levels of ability, including casual walks around College Park’s Lake Artemesia to multi-day interstate treks encompassing dozens of miles. Bacon said most of the older traditions and expeditions continue today.
One major tradition includes the Four State Challenge, one of the club’s most popular outdoor events. The 24 hour and nearly 50 mile hike begins at the Virginia border, continuing through West Virginia and Maryland before ending at the Pennsylvania border. For Talley, it was the “coolest thing [he] did in college.”
“Some of our trip leaders are crazy and will do a ton of miles of hiking,” said Kovacs. “The people that sign up for it, they know what they’re signing up for and it’s really fun.”
Members can decide what upcoming challenges will be a part of the four-state journey, such as “Music State,” where hikers play instruments on the trail.
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Where other clubs have modernized, Terrapin Trail Club remains astonishingly similar to the past, said Lavallee.
“College is kind of rough sometimes,”said Bacon. “When you come here, you build this connection [with] friends and have people to not only just lean on in hard times but also do really cool stuff with.”
