Taking it on The Chin

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These newly minted graduates of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies celebrated with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne on The Chin, a favorite cliff on one of their rock-climbing routes in Connecticut’s Sleeping Giant State Park. (That’s downtown New Haven on the horizon at right.) To get this shot, Evan Glessner ’19MEM and Ben Zukowski ’19MEM climbed to a small ledge above their chosen spot and set a camera to take a burst of 30 photos after ten minutes. Then they rappelled down to their friends; Jesse Callahan Bryant ’19MEM stood ready to help them, and Jack Singer ’19MF held the bottle. “Once we saw the flash going, we popped the champagne,” says Bryant. “The four of us combined have probably climbed the route about 40 times,” he adds. He’s sure they’ll return: “We actually left a time capsule with a notebook and pencil on that same ledge a while back so that each time we or others climb it, thoughts and stories can be logged.” Nobody has signed the log book yet, but Bryant says they’ll check back at their fifth reunion.