With more than 700 members, the MSU Spartan Ski Club is the second largest ski club in the country - and is always welcoming to new members.
The ski club was founded in the 1970s and remains one of the largest student organizations on campus. The club travels around the country and even abroad, taking trips to Austria and Switzerland. Its next trip takes place this Feb. 25-27 weekend at Blue Mountain in Ontario, Canada.
Building construction management senior John Webb, a junior officer in the club, has been a member for four years.
Even though the Lansing area is flat, Webb and the other club members try to make the best of it.
"I ride the rails at MSU and around Lansing," Webb said. "There's no hills around here so we just kind of do with what we can find."
The club's recent trips have been sold out, so membership fees will be decreased from $30 to $20 because there isn't much going on, said Gina Iaquinto, audiology and speech sciences senior and public relations representative for the ski club.
The trips, in general, take 280 members, which means everyone can't go, so members have to sign up in advance.
"Our winter break trip is usually cheaper because we take a bus; this year it was around $575," she said. "They usually range from upper $400 to just below $600. Spring break usually runs anywhere from $700 to just $1,000."
At the beginning of the fall semester, the club holds a general membership meeting. A T-shirt is included with the membership fee, and participation isn't limited to those who have skied. Only equipment is necessary, Iaquinto said.
"We have totally beginners that come out and try," she said. "I knew a couple of people personally that came to Colorado this year and it was their first time."
But that doesn't mean more seasoned skiers won't be challenged, Iaquinto said.
One of the ski club's trips to Big Sky in Montana left Iaquinto a bit shaken from the mountain's 11,000-foot peak and blowing winds.
"I went to the very top of the peak, it's a really hard run and it was really windy. We had to hike and carry our equipment. A big gust of wind came and just knocked my snowboard out my hand and there it went down the mountain," she said. "It was a really steep mountain and it was hard to walk down to get the snowboard. It took me 45 minutes and I was terrified."
The ski club is sponsored by Monster Energy drink and receives everything from Monster Energy beverages to stickers, hats and T-shirts.
A company that had been providing the club with ski movies gave its name to the Monster Energy drink company, Iaquinto said.
The Spartan Ski Club overlaps the MSU Alpine Ski Team in some ways, but the club is not competitive, Iaquinto said.
"It's more social," Iaquinto said. "We usually do something for St. Patrick's Day, we do a semiformal at the end of the year. We do a spring bash where we go out to a park and just grill. Some people are in it for the social events."
Even its 76-year-old adviser, Professor Emeritus Richard Rech, is a skiing fanatic. Rech has been skiing since 1954 and skis an average of five days a week. For the past eight years during the winter, he goes to Utah to ski.
"It's the first large ski area I skied on in 1959," he said. "It's a very charming area and they don't allow snowboards. They keep it very conservative and it has the best snow."
Rech said he's taking it a little bit slower this year because he recently suffered a injury that required surgery.
He doesn't quite remember when he took over the ski club, but believes it was 1981 or 1982.
But the reason Rech keeps pulling out his skis and heading to the mountain after more than 50 years is because he loves it.
"It's so much fun and good exercise," he said.
