End of Class Festivities

Party Planning

As students, towards the end of the class, you'll be throwing a party, partly as thanks for the volunteers who help put on this class, but mostly because, hey, party. They're typically low-key events, either done as a potluck or catered appetizers. We've used Doodle in the past to find a date that can accommodate the most number of people. Here are ideas from previous years, but feel free to be creative:

  • Potluck at student's house

  • Themed party of "The WAC Awards" with a red carpet and everyone getting dressed up (yeah, it's weird seeing people without their Gore-Tex on)

  • Golden Gardens Park BBQ with bonfire

  • Outdoors at 192 Brewing, conveniently bikeable

Class T-shirts

You'll be creating and selling t-shirts to the class and instructors either towards the end of the class or shortly after the class is over. Typically, a student with some designer/creative chops will volunteer to design the shirt and perhaps someone else will volunteer to actually put the order together for the screen printer.

Here are some tips:

  • The t-shirts can be any style or material. Note that synthetic materials are harder to screen print on, and the materials that are used by most of the screen printers are not nearly as nice as the merino wool or soft synthetic that we like to wear in the backcountry or working out. This means that you'll just get better results printing on a cotton tee.

      • WAC logos suitable for printing are here.

  • Send out a survey (Surveymonkey or Google Form) asking for sizes and quantities prior to ordering.

  • PayPal and Venmo are great for collecting money.

  • The 2014 class used MSC Print House for the screen printing, and they did a really good job at a reasonable price.

    • MSC (and most other places) were willing to print on various styles, so there's no reason not to offer up the design on different styles (e.g. hoody, t-shirt). The 2014 class offered hoodys and t-shirts, with most people ordering hoodys.

        • The blanks were a pretty good quality. Hoodys were by Independent Trader, the women's shirts were by Sanmar, and the men's shirts were by Foundry.

    • Two tips for working with them:

      • Give them a hard deadline that is at least a week ahead of when you actually need the shirt. Otherwise they will bump your order to get bigger jobs done if things get busy for them.

      • Make sure someone is willing to do all the coordination. They don't collect individual payments or distribute individual shirts.

  • The 2022 class made buffs instead of T-shirts!