Northeastern outdoors club continues effort to rebuild beloved New Hampshire lodge

NUHOC members pose for a group photo while building a yurt, which serves as a placeholder for the lodge that burnt down in 2015. The club has been fundraising to rebuild the lodge with the help of alumni. Photo courtesy NUHOC.

For hundreds of students on campus, the Northeastern University Huskiers and Outing Club, or NUHOC, is an escape from the stress and chaos of Boston. Since 1971, members of NUHOC have spent their weekends at the Brown Memorial Lodge in Shelbourne, New Hampshire, or “the Loj”, as club members call it. 

Since the Loj burnt down in January 2015, members of the club have worked to rebuild their beloved home away from home, which is tucked away in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. In the meantime, the club has put up a small yurt on the property where the Loj stood, a placeholder while the club works to rebuild.

Apart from their trips to the Loj, NUHOC provides opportunities for students to explore the outdoors, escape Boston and learn new outdoor skills such as hiking and skiing. Members of the club can rent gear from the club’s gear locker with their membership cards, take courses with club members, and organize and lead trips out of the city. 

“Basically anyone in the club who’s pretty good at something and knows how to do it can decide to run a trip,” said Sophia Cotman, a third-year civil engineering major and NUHOC’s vice president of organization. “I’m running an intro to surfing trip.”

NUHOC also runs an annual trip to Acadia National Park in Maine in October, along with another big Loj trip in May. The club usually sees a turnout of 100 to 150 people joining them, Cotman said. These trips, along with their regular weekend visits to the lodge, have created a strong bond among devoted members of the club. 

“You spend a lot of time with these other really cool people,” said Ben Orton, a third-year mechanical engineering major and current president of NUHOC. “It does become a pretty close-knit community, being able to have these trips that really make the time at college really special.”

The club also boasts a large, loyal community of alumni. Since 1941 — when the club was founded  — alumni of the club have continued to come back to the Loj in support of the club.

“The first time I went to the Loj happened to be the 50th anniversary of it, so there were a bunch of alumni there,” Orton said. “Some were as old as 70 or 80 years old, and they had all experienced the previous lodge building.” 

Alumni have particularly resurfaced to support NUHOC’s lodge rebuilding effort. The contractor NUHOC hired for the lodge rebuild, Mark Haines, is a NUHOC alum. 

Over the years, the Loj was well taken care of by a group of NUHOC members called “the Loj Committee,” tasked with maintaining and improving the Loj. Loj Committee members, or LCs, are rewarded keys to the Loj for life, but only after an intense vetting process where they prove they are worthy of that privilege. 

Members must visit the Loj a certain number of times, become a Loj Committee Trainee, or LCT and then over the course of a year or two, complete a check list of 25 items crucial to the care of the Loj. After completing those steps, the LCTs must make a speech about why they deserve a spot as an LC, and the Loj Committee members take a vote. 

Last summer, the club formed a Build Committee to plan the logistics of rebuilding the Loj. 

“Build Committee is super cool because you sit at the center of [NUHOC]: the alumni, the club and even donors and the university administration,” said Steven Abbott, a fourth-year computer science major and co-chair of the Building Committee. “It’s a pretty cool effort, and I think a unique one in the clubs at Northeastern.”

Although NUHOC is supported and funded by the university, Northeastern was not willing to fund the lodge rebuild project due to liability, Abbott said. However, in 2020, a group of NUHOC alumni founded the Northeastern Outing Club Association, or NEOCA, which is raising money for the lodge rebuild project. The association is led by NUHOC alum Ken Mitchell. 

NEOCA has raised over $40,000 out of their $350,000 goal, who’s “entire mission is helping outing clubs build lodges in the Northeast,” Abbott said. Although they have yet to extend to other universities, NEOCA is focused on building NUHOC their lodge and hopes to do the same for other outdoors university clubs in the future. 

“It’s been really really cool to see how much we can do as students who happen to like the outdoors,” Orton said. “We’re all coming together to make this thing happen.”