Out There: Skiing in Austria

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Outside Magazine December 2004

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Out There
Absolutely Knackered (Cont.)

THE NEXT MORNING, we stumbled onto buses at 8 a.m. for a trip to the Kitzsteinhorn glacier, about an hour southeast of Hinterglemm, where, we had been promised, we would see snow. The group I found myself with were not the types to let things like hangovers stand in the way of their skiing. The main co-conspirators were Hannah Durden, 21, an energetic Cambridge second-year with a devious smile, and Adam Gilbert, 20, an ebullient mountain of a man given to spontaneous bouts of rugby-inspired song.

"I think the Hotel Adler might be rethinking the all-you-can-drink buffet after last night," Gilbert noted, as Hannah nodded in agreement.

"I was at the bar until four and still got up this morning," Hannah half-whined. Gilbert would abide no excuses.

"Do you want a prize? A medal? A commendation? A small certificate?" he taunted. "Less chat, more skiing."

The students had girded themselves for the slopes in three distinct modes. There were the X Games–inspired extremoids, swaddled in Gore-Tex and evincing an Oedipal attachment to their CamelBak hoses. Then there was a group happily attired in whatever they'd had close at hand, from track suits to hoodies to headbands. The third group had donned an assortment of Tina Turner wigs and gorilla masks, feather boas and bikinis, and included a team of men in one-piece circa-1985 neon snowsuits staring down another team in dark pinstriped business suits and Halloween masks of Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush. The teams and the outfits signified participation in the Valley Rally, a contest involving the completion of various tasks around the glacier, with few rules and little in the way of reward, beyond a high probability of nudity.

After a morning of skiing, Hannah and Gilbert were plotting Rally strategy over lunch in the midmountain Alpincenter. It had begun snowing ferociously that morning, and as the near-whiteout drove people inside, it turned the Rally into a spectator sport, the Alpincenter's glass-walled bar filling with Austrians and students seeking liquid warmth. Hannah and a teammate, Chris Scott, 20, were headed out into the blizzard, naked except for hats, boots, and gloves, each employing a strategically positioned cafeteria tray to partly cover up as they ascended the 50-foot hill outside the bar. Their face-first descent culminated in a naked mass of tangled limbs and elicited rousing cheers from the bar crowd.

"My thighs and my right buttock are tingling," reported Chris, once inside.

"No more naked excursions," Hannah said after she'd gotten her clothes back on. Not to say there was any shame or regret. "Your university years are the one time in your life when you're allowed to do anything you want," she told me, unabashed, on the bus ride back to Hinterglemm. "Why not make the most of it?"

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