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Outside Magazine December 2003

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Ski Naked
What do you get when you bus two dozen high school seniors from the Nebraska flatlands to the peaks of Colorado for their first winter trip to the Rockies? You get an all-American rite of passage, gangsta rap, and terror on the bunny slope. You get kissy-face, rough surf in the hot tub, flaming stogies, brazen thongs, and a blizzard of memories that will last forever.

By Brad Wetzler


	ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS: The hastings posse in Breckenridge warming up for a big night. (Gail Albert-Halaban)

I should definitely rent Jackass: The Movie, says Chuck, a cheerful 18-year-old with thick, shaggy hair. As he looks out a bus window at the prairie and cows whizzing by, he tells me about the Party Boy scene, which he calls "outstanding." One of the Jackass dudes, wearing only a thong, goes inside a Japanese electronics store and starts dancing wildly to the techno music playing on the sound system. This makes management and customers uncomfortable, so they try to shove him out the door. Pretty much all the kids from Chuck's hometown of Hastings, Nebraska, think it's hilarious.

Before we hit the road, we got a few final instructions in the parking lot of St. Cecilia, a blocky brick structure that's home to 205 students in grades 9 through 12. As the bus idled and a choking cloud of exhaust wafted through its open door, Father Scott Courtney, a soft-spoken 30-year-old school priest with a shaved head, recited a prayer, calling on God to watch out for the students and for the kids to "make good choices" during the long weekend ahead. He put extra emphasis on good.

Then, with the sun just above the horizon, we shoved off from the crowd of waving parents, past the school sign with its inspirational message (TURN AWAY FROM SIN AND BE FAITHFUL TO THE GOSPEL), and lit out for the westbound on-ramp to Interstate 80.

The plan is to pack a lot of living into four short days. Today, a Friday in late March, we'll make the nine-hour drive to the Breckenridge Ski Resort, a large family-fun zone superimposed on a quaint, Victorian-era mining town, 80 miles west of Denver. Tonight we'll do some sledding. On Saturday and Sunday we'll get up early to ski. On Monday the bus will take everyone home.

What is it about high school ski trips? Something in the thin mountain air makes the kids' synapses pop like Independance Day fireworks.

It will be a quick trip, the chaperones have said, but a rich experience. Head chaperone Susan Sondag—a chirpy 52-year-old mother of two whose devout 18-year-old daughter, Liz, is on the trip—has told me her goals are "to expose these kids, most of whom have never skied, to an exciting new sport, let them stay in nice condos right on the mountain, and let them get to know each other better. And hopefully to do it in a hassle-free way."

Sounds good. But I can't help wondering about—how to put this?—the exuberance that high school ski trips are famous for unleashing, particularly off the slopes. From my own youth, I know a little about such outings. If the chemistry is right, they can be fun, rowdy, and filled with a bit of harmless debauchery. If it's too right, you can get Fellini Satyricon. It's as if the thin air and the endorphins released during a hard day's skiing combine to make idle synapses pop like Independence Day fireworks.

Teens, who are locked in mortal combat to prove they can fly all by themselves, are plenty susceptible to these chemical forces. From the moment I hear the Party Boy dance being evoked, I know this group will be no exception. The chaperones must know it, too, and while it's possible to put a maximum-security lockdown on ski-trip antics, they don't seem inclined to go that route. Instead they've decided to give the kids some room, some trust, and the benefit of the doubt—just the sort of treatment they would have wanted when they were young.

And if the kids violate all that and go nuts anyway? Well, it will be like skiing itself. As least they'll learn how to fall properly.

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Contributing editor Brad Wetzler profiled climber Will Gadd in the April issue.

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