Trip Reports

Trip Reports are written first person accounts of VOC trips, trips a VOCer did but can also be about outdoor philosophies, ethics, or just expressions of love for the mountains. They can be an instruction guides for how to make some piece of gear, or if you're really into the history of some outdoor sport, an article about it. Everything vaguely about non-motorized outdoor sports is welcome!

Most trip reports also end up as articles for the VOC Journal but not all VOCJ articles are published online as trip reports.

Trip Report Style Guidelines

Shamelessly stolen from the VOCJ56 Style Guidelines. This is just for reference. If you're a kind soul you'll try to follow it, but if you don't, it's fine for Trip Reports. The copy editors will fix inconsistencies in editing. But if you try to dispute an editorial decision that's specified on this style sheet, the style sheet will win.

• The time of day should be written like this, 6:30am
• use Canadian spelling (per Canadian Oxford Dictionary)
• use series (Oxford) comma (i.e., bananas, apples, and oranges. NOT bananas, apples and oranges.)
• use active voice whenever possible
• avoid using "this" and "that" as pronouns rather than demonstrative adjectives
• don't use emoticons and gratuitous exclamation points. If you do they will be unceremoniously eliminated
• enclose dialogue in double quotation marks
• enclose phrases or words that require definition within single quotation marks
• words in languages other than English should be italicized.
• give full names in the first mentions of any people in your article
• give full names for the first mentions of any potentially unfamiliar acronyms
• use single spaces after all punctuation
• use two short dashes for dashes separating phrases; use one short dash for hyphenated words.
• use metric units; or at least give a metric conversion to any imperial units you use
• spell out numbers from one to ten; use numerals for everything else, and use a comma in figures with four or more digits. (e.g., 2,568). Exception: use numerals when using decimals, metric units (e.g., 400 m, 30 km), and percentages (e.g., 28 per cent—note that "per cent" is spelled out as two words)
• it's "gaiters," kids—not "gators." Unless you're actually talking about alligators.
• use "workhikes"--not "work hikes"