On Oct. 6, the fifth annual Omondi Obura Peak Bag raised approximately $35,000 for Campus Connect, according to Steve Cook ’88. Peak Bag, a mental health awareness event, was created by the Class of 1988 to honor former lightweight rower Omondi Obura ’88, who died by suicide in 1989. The event — organized by the Peak Bag Fund — encourages participants to complete an outdoor activity of choice, such as a walk, hike, swim or paddle, according to the Peak Bag website.
Peak Bag raises money through donations and matches $50 per participant, according to fundraising lead Kate Haffner ’88, a former teammate of Obura’s. She added that donations from the event support Campus Connect — Dartmouth’s suicide prevention training program on campus — through the Omondi Obura Fund. The fund was founded by the Class of 1988 in 2021, after the first Peak Bag fundraiser.
“This is our effort to give students the tools we didn’t have when we lost Omondi,” Haffner said. “The Campus Connect program provides guided discussion for students and employees on how to talk to each other if someone is struggling or may be in crisis.”
According to Peak Bag founder and Obura’s former teammate Cook, the event began in 2020 when Cook and his former teammates planned an “outdoor activity” over Zoom to honor Omondi. The name “peak bag” stemmed from a past Dartmouth Outing Club program that allowed students to climb every 4,000-foot summit in New Hampshire. The feat became colloquially known as a “peak bag.”
“Bagging a peak just means you made it to the top and you’ve done it,” Cook said.
Since its first iteration in 2020, Peak Bag has grown to include participants beyond the Class of 1988 — from 13 countries and 72 “peaks bagged” in 2023, according to Cook. Peak Bag has raised around $300,000 since 2020, exceeding the original goal of $200,000. This year, Peak Bag raised $35,000, according to Haffner.
The Peak Bag event “encourages” participation in physical activities that people enjoy but do not always “make time for,” according to Outdoor Engagement Committee chair and economics professor Bruce Sacerdote ’90, who assisted with the event.
“A big part of mental health is enjoying the outdoors and spending time with your peers,” Sacedote said. “On the hike I was on, people talked a little bit about their own struggles with mental health, but it was more about friends and family that had struggled with mental health issues.”
Sacerdote said the organizers were “pleased” that “hundreds of people” signed up to participate in the event in the Upper Valley and around the world. He added that advertising by “the house communities, student government, many athletic teams and [the] Greek Leadership Council” helped publicize the event.
The increased advertising could potentially “make[s] it easy” for other universities to “do their own version of the event,” Sacerdote added.
According to Cook, the fundraiser is typically held in early October because academics can be “an isolating experience” for students at the beginning of the school year.
“We really thought that having people on campus who seemed open to the idea of talking about depression or talking about mental health [could be beneficial],” Cook said. “If you recognize that somebody went on a hike with you that was dedicated to this, then maybe that would also be a door that people could knock on.”
Nathan Shibley ’25 said he participated in the Peak Bag event for the first time this year with his economics class, which is taught by Sacerdote. He found that the group’s hike through part of the Appalachian Trail near the Dartmouth Skiway fostered positive interactions with the people he hiked with, he said.
“For me, the main thing was not necessarily directly talking about mental health so much that was valuable,” Shibley said. “Hiking with people you enjoy and having interesting conversations is more of a mental health boost.”
College President Sian Leah Beilock wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth that the event is a “perfect example of what we want to be as a community” because it “actively build[s] mental health and well-being skills” and encourages community members to “[look] out for each other.”
