Seek And Ye May Find Nic Alumni’s Scavenger Hunt Sends Dozens Scurrying For Odds And Ends

“OK, listen up!”

Dawn Atwater climbed up on top of a picnic table to explain the rules of the North Idaho College Alumni Association’s First Annual Scavenger Hunt.

On Saturday morning, some 40 people gathered in front of the alumni association chairperson near Boswell Hall.

There’s stuff to scavenge on Dike Road, Atwater told them. There’s stuff all the way over on Tubbs Hill, too.

Oh, and one other thing.

“Yesterday someone took the ‘Art on the Green’ sign down,” Atwater cautioned. “So don’t do question No. 6. If you try to find No. 6, you’ll be here till the sun goes down.”

Judging from the rest of the 13-page scavenger hunt manual - featuring a mixture of science and local history - it may have seemed to contestants like they’d be there until sundown anyway. But they had to be finished by high noon, so everyone - college students, moms and dads, and a gaggle of kids - scurried off in workmanlike fashion to complete the 23, er, 22 stations.

Well, almost everyone.

Surrounded by four eight-year-old Cub Scouts, Barbara Scarth had her hands full getting the den organized.

“OK, here’s the first stop,” she said. “We have to find a magazine here, which isn’t a book or a journal. There’s an antique wheel beside it, and to the right of it you’ll find an antique tree …”

Meanwhile, little Collin Schilling played with a bag given to each of the 14 scavenger hunt teams to pick up garbage along their way. A full bag was worth 10 extra points, but Schilling made himself a parachute.

Something else caught Chris Carter’s attention. Each of the teams had been given the name of a bird. Scarth’s Cub Scouts, Carter among them, were the Egrets.

“Earth calling egrets!” Scarth called out, corralling the youngsters into the direction of the “magazine,” one of NIC’s old armory buildings. “When we’re finished, it says here we have to make sounds like an egret would make when he sees a predator.”

“Oh, I know that,” Carter said. “Oogah, boogah.”

The North Idaho College Alumni Association was founded in 1995 and sponsors four events a year. For the Scavenger Hunt, organizers Atwater, Sue Pistorius, Jule Muller, and plenty of others gathered questions and problem-solving exercises, then assembled them along a route that took participants over half of Coeur d’Alene’s waterfront.

“We wanted to promote the alumni association, to let people know we’re out in the community doing things,” Pistorius said.

Here’s an example from the question manual: “There is a large ponderosa pine in front of NIC’s Sherman Administrative building. Guesstimate the height of the tree based on the fact that its man-made brick neighbor is 25-feet tall.”

From there, contestants used a measuring device used by turn-of-the-century loggers to estimate just how many board feet were in the tree, and how much it would be worth if it were chopped down.

According to the “Robins,” a group made up of Coeur d’Alene residents Katherine Von Hagen, Amber Castle, Wendy Smithson and Pat Barber, the giant tree is worth about $1,200. With a lumber mill down the road, just don’t say that too loudly.

“Am I having fun yet?” Von Hagen laughed. “This was the first question, and it was a killer.”

The Robins headed for the boardwalk, where they performed a water-clarity test, followed by a search of Tubbs Hill for glacial till.

Three generations of the Gaumond family were on hand for the hunt - Kathleen, 30, her daughter Caitlin, 11, and grandmother Joan Leahy. They were busy with question No. 5: “Six-pack rings are particularly dangerous when left on the ground or in the water because ….”

“Because of the fish,” Caitlin Gaumond said. “If they get stuck around a fish, they can’t swim and they die.”

“And the birds,” added her mother, offering some help.

At a scavenger station along the Spokane River, one of the alumni association’s oldest members, Warren “Squirt” Keating, North Idaho Junior College Class of ‘40, manned the water-velocity test. He throws a painted piece of wood into the water, and hunters measured how long it took the wood to travel 100 feet.

Sure, the scavenger hunt is a lot of fun, Keating said. But it’s just nice to be out on a Saturday morning, enjoying the sunshine.

“When people find out how wonderful this is,” he said, “I’m sure they’ll have this event every year.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo