NOLS New York Area Reunion & Presentation (& Raffle)

Rich collecting name tags

With NOLS, you are always a winner. 

Last week I attended the NOLS  New York Area Reunion & Presentation. New York has the largest concentration of NOLS alums anywhere, so for NOLS, the New York Area Reunion is a big thing.

As we entered the Patagonia store in SoHo, which graciously hosted the event, we made nametags for ourselves. I saw a few familiar faces and a lot of new faces I did not recognize. After mingling with other New York Area Alums as well as the folk from Lander, including Rich, Pip and David, and enjoying hors d’oeuvres, we settled down into folding chairs for Dave Anderson’s presentation about the first ascent of a new route in Argentina’s Piritas Valley.

We Won! We won!

Dave’s presentation was not an overly technical documentation of the climb but much more of a travelogue of the adventure from start to finish. In classic NOLS style, Dave included as much information and personal reflection about trip planning, gear carried, the approach, and the return trip as he did about the actual climb.

Following Dave’s presentation, everyone took off their name tags, folded them in half, and Rich Brame collected them in a NOLS hat. Names we then pulled for various prizes. My wife won a hardback copy of WindRiver Wilderness, a picture book edited by Ronald H. Chilcote. I won a Climber Swiss Army knife modified by NOLS Aum Joel Bukiewicz of Cut Brooklyn.  This was my third or fourth New York Area Reunion but the first time I have won any of the raffle prizes.

The knife I won is especially meaningful to me because, while I had not met Joel until the evening of the reunion, I knew about him and his work through his sister, with whom I have paddled.

Photos from the Reunion cane be viewed on my Picassa page.