Oberg in the Tetons for helping city kids
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
After Strong Wings Instructor Megan Oberg raised $3,500 so five inner city teenagers could go backwoods hiking and canoeing, she carried a heavy backpack up and down Nantucket's beaches this spring.

Strong Wings instructor Megan Oberg is climbing the 12,605-foot Mt. Moran in Western Wyoming's Grand Tetons this week. ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent

No one forced the 30-year-old outdoor recreation leader to carry the pack; she took it upon herself in preparation for her own mountaineering experience, so she could approach the kind of fitness needed to tackle the 12,605-foot Mt. Moran in the Grand Teton Range in Wyoming.

"I've been mountain biking a lot, I've been loading up my backpack with as much weight as I can and walking on the beaches; the elevation is going to be challenging to me," she said. Oberg left the island yesterday to begin her adventure.

Oberg, who thrives on being outdoors and helping island students and summer campers discover Nantucket's great outdoors, took part in Backpacker Magazine's Summit For Someone last winter and spring to help raise money for Big City Mountaineers, a nonprofit dedicated to urban youths.

Big City Moutaineers provides groups of five "under-resourced urban youths" with an Outward Bound-like experience in which teenagers are guided on five-day wilderness backpacking trips or seven-day canoe trips. In a mentoring style of one-on-one teaching, the adult trip leaders use the natural world as a classroom to help their charges learn to overcome cultural, financial and social hardships, and to create opportunities for themselves back in their communities.

Summit for Someone and Big City Mountaineers appealed to Oberg. Although she never had to face the challenges of these youths as a teenager, she found her calling by participating in the Strong Wings High Adventures program during her high school years on Nantucket. Further motivation came from working at Strong Wings with high school students less fortunate than herself.

She says her work with the Alternative Students program at NHS is an "inspiration" to her.

"I work with students who are in danger of flunking out," Oberg said. "Being able to get them out into the mountains, I see the program making a difference."

Oberg mentioned a female student who graduated from Nantucket High School in recent years who benefited from the alternative students program.

"We were definitely a stepping stone for her being able to graduate," said Oberg.

As a reward for their fundraising efforts, Summit for Someone then offers people like Oberg free wilderness trips with brand new gear. Her free gear includes an ice axe, mountaineering boots, inner and outerwear technical apparel, backcountry stove, hybrid footwear, pack, sleeping bag and pad, tent, trekking poles, headlamp, sunglasses, climbing harness, and a climbing helmet.

Oberg chose a four-day hike on Skillet Glacier leading to the summit of Mt. Moran up its east face. She says she is more than ready for the trip, especially because it coincides with the start of Strong Wings' summer programs, a time when she usually cannot leave the island. And, despite Oberg being the only woman signed up for the climb, she is psyched for the challenge.

"I'm used to doing a lot of trips like this in a male-dominated world," she said. "There are only four people going on the trip and two leaders. For me, the thing I like about traveling is, I love traveling outside, and so a big part of it for me is the people I meet."

Even driving up from her father's house in Las Vegas, Nev. to the Jackson Hole, Wyoming area where Oberg will cross String and Leigh lakes to the trailhead is part of the fun. "I love being in a vehicle driving through beautiful country I've never been through before," she said.

When Oberg returns she wants find a way to get her students involved in the Summit for Someone program so she and her pupils can share wilderness trips together.

"One of the things that inspired me is if this trip goes well for me, you can also sign up groups for it. I love the idea of maybe getting some people who go on our High Adventure trips and all of us doing some

fundraising."