Skiing with Friends

A New Year’s Tradition

By Carson Bennett, 1-07-08

	Happy New Year!

New Year’s Eve, 2007. It’s 2:00pm at Arapahoe Basin. My best college buddy Jason, his brother Kyle, his friend Josh, my friend (and Jason’s wife) Rosie, and I have been in a car for nearly five hours, circumnavigating the I-70 closure by driving from Denver south to Fairplay, over Hoosier Pass into Breckenridge, then over Swan Mountain Road and up to the Basin. As soon as we hit the A-Basin parking lot we grab our gear and jump in the lift line. The wind chill is twenty below at the top of the Pallavicini lift. Gales whipping snow over the Pali cornice feel like razor blades. I try to ask Kyle which way we’re going. It’s our first run, so I assume we’ll head left and coast down a nice blue run, like West Wall or Grizzly Road, to stretch our legs after the long car ride. The wind is so cold I can barely move my face. I make a sound like, “Hee, a, leh o rye?” Kyle frowns.

When we unload, Kyle heads right. We all gather at the “experts only” sign where Jason and Kyle decide we’ll head for the alleys. Nothing like a quick run through steep, narrow, double-black glades to get the blood flowing.

This is a New Year’s tradition. Since we were college sophomores (lo, those many years ago) Jason and I and anyone who could make it would gather in Summit County, Colorado, rent a house or a condo, pack it with food, drink, and friends, and ski our butts off for three or four days. I think our record was in 2001; twenty people in a two bedroom house across the street and up the hill from The Goat bar in Keystone. This year, only Jason, Rosie, Josh and I were able to get together.

After two hours of the coldest skiing I’ve endured in my entire life, we dropped our gear in the car and grabbed bloody marys at the 6th Alley bar. Neither Rosie nor I could feel our feet. (A week later, I still have no feeling in my big toes). I-70 was still closed over Vail pass, and our original plan, to meet up with Jason’s friends in Vail for new year’s eve festivities, was scrapped. Kyle invited us to stay at his apartment in Frisco, and after a long night drinking cheap champagne from plastic cups, a foray into the jam-packed Moose Jaw bar where the band Rojo Caliente laid down Pearl Jam covers with mandolin, banjo and washboard, and a midnight sprint back to the apartment, dodging drunken street-snowmobilers and honking our noisemakers, we crashed on Kyle’s floor. Hello 2008.

In the morning, Vail Pass was open and we headed up for an incredible ski day. The snow was deep, the sky was blue, and the temperature was only barely below freezing. We laughed and hooted our way through the Back Bowls all day. On one of the last runs before the lifts closed, I followed my friends through an aspen glade in the golden afternoon light, and I thought to myself, this new year’s tradition is my favorite time of the year; when we carve a few days out of our busy lives, full of responsibilities, debts, and anxieties, and ski together.

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