From Coral Reefs to Crater Floors, Students Experience Maui

As sea turtles drifted by and schools of tropical fish darted through coral reefs, Tal Nir floated beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean off Maui, taking in a world far removed from campus.

“For a moment, you’re part of something bigger,” says Nir, an industrial engineering major from Brookline. “It feels like watching a 3D movie, except it's real.”

That sense of awe carried throughout the Outdoor Adventure Program’s first-ever spring break trip to Hawaii, where nine students — including student leaders Julia Boucher ’24 and Tyler Beyna — spent the week exploring Maui under the guidance of Program Director Kate Ford.

The weeklong trip combined a snorkeling excursion — where students spotted breaching whales — with a four-day backpacking trek through Haleakalā National Park, giving students the chance to experience both the island’s lush coastline and its remote volcanic landscape.

“Hawaii was one of those places that I heard about as a kid, but it was just so far away and seemed impossible,” says Nir, who had participated in several Outdoor Adventure Program (OAP) trips closer to home but assumed Hawaii would be out of reach financially.

That perception changed when she saw that OAP subsidized the cost for students, who also did group fundraising activities in the fall. The $1,495 trip included airfare, ground transportation, food and gear such as backpacks, tents and cookware.

Ryan Widdop, a senior computer science major from Easton, had never done an OAP trip before, but the chance to backpack inside a volcanic crater was too good to miss.

“I expected it to be a very cool trip, but it completely blew my expectations away,” says Widdop, an avid outdoors enthusiast who enjoys hiking and spending time off the grid. “The geography, the terrain, the plants in the crater — it was just unbelievable.”

Beginning near the summit of Haleakalā, the group descended into the crater, hiking for four days across volcanic terrain and camping at remote sites, where they cooked their own meals and carried everything they needed.

“The crater was just all red sand — like what I would imagine Mars would look like,” Nir says. “We hiked through maybe three completely different landscapes, from sand to lush green. It was so different.”

At night, the remote setting offered another unforgettable experience.

“The stargazing is incredible,” Widdop says. “You can see the Milky Way stretching across the sky, and even the Orion Nebula with your naked eye.”

For Sam Morgan, a junior meteorology and atmospheric science major from Boulder, Colorado, the trip offered a chance to observe weather patterns in a tropical environment.

“The weather in Hawaii was really fascinating — you’ve got all that tropical moisture, and storms can just sit over the islands,” Morgan says. “That’s very different from what we see in the continental U.S.”

The group left Maui shortly before the island experienced severe flooding from a series of storms, underscoring the rapidly changing conditions they had been monitoring during the trip.

With little to no cell service in the backcountry, students spent days fully immersed in their surroundings and in each other’s company — and unplugged from their phones.

“I don’t think I realize on my day-to-day how much my attention is divided,” Nir says. “There’s so much out there to see and notice when you’re not constantly distracted.”

The experience also brought together a group of students who largely did not know one another before the trip.  

“Now I have a group of friends at UMass Lowell that are also into the outdoors. We’re going rock climbing and hanging out outside of school,” says Widdop, who returned to campus “super-rejuvenated” to finish the spring semester.

“The Outdoor Adventure Program adds a lot of value to being a UMass Lowell student,” he says. “I just want to go find my next adventure.”

This summer, the OAP is offering a weeklong wilderness canoe trip to Minnesota.