President Hunter Rawlings and Cornell alumnus Robert B. Hoffman '58 will join Cornell Outdoor Education in dedicating the new Hoffman Challenge Course on Mount Pleasant in the Town of Dryden, Friday, Sept. 26 at 4:30 p.m.

The challenge course combines exercises set at ground level with others in the trees and on telephone poles. The course includes a 65-foot replica of the Cornell clock tower, complete with a "tree fort" platform, rappelling stations, a giant swing, a 400-foot zip line and other off-the-ground elements. These exercises are offset by team-building challenges on the ground that require accommodating 12 people on a 2-foot square or teams working with blindfolded partners to escape a complicated maze.

There will be demonstration team-building programs in progress beginning at 1:30 p.m. Friday, leading up to the formal dedication ceremony at 4:30 p.m.

Cornell Outdoor Education, a division of Cornell's Department of Athletics and Physical Education, is widely recognized as one of the leading university-based outdoor programs in North America. The program offers 200 courses annually in backpacking, rock climbing, paddling, caving, cycling, natural history and other outdoor living skills to 3,000 students, as well as providing extensive student leadership training opportunities. The Hoffman Challenge Course and accompanying Teambuilding Program constitutes a major program expansion intended to further the program's mission "to develop teamwork, leadership and growth through outdoor experience." The program's first major adventure-based learning facility, the Lindseth Climbing Wall in the Field House, was opened in 1990.

Transportation vans to the Hoffman Challenge Course will be available from the Field House on the Cornell campus at 3:30 and 4 p.m., or you can meet the vans and follow them to the site. To drive to the course, take Route 366 into Varna and turn right on Mt. Pleasant Road. Travel 2.7 miles, and when the woods on the left become an open field, you will see a new, gravel parking pull-off area. Turn in there and drive to the corner of the meadow. (If you pass the white observatory on the right, you have gone too far.)