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Outside Magazine December 2004
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Out There
Absolutely Knackered (Cont.)

SITTING IN THEIR SUITE before the Farewell Party, Lenny and his friends had been completely transformed by the snow, and it was evident that the stories of this week, embellished slightly, would bond them together long after the trip and be trotted out at parties and weddings for years to come. Chaps was on the phone with his parents—"We've gone from grumpy with no snow to always knackered, because we're out skiing all day," he said—while Lenny mooned him to let him know the conversation had gone on long enough.

"Yeah, the snow and all the trails being opened turned this trip from shit into a great week," said James.

Gaz lay on the floor leafing through a skiing magazine, pronouncing, on the basis of his four days of powder hounding, that they should pick a ski resort—Val d'Isère or Chamonix—to work at for a year after they graduate.

"It's really embarrassing that Kat's just a miles better skier than me," Gaz complained. Why? "Because she's my girlfriend, and it's embarrassing if I'm not better than her at everything."

As the Farewell Party unfolded later that evening in a huge tent set up under the main gondola, it became clear that the rest of the week's social events—the flügerl-chugging contests, the Bling-Bling Party, the snowball fights—had all been mere training for this final night of debauchery. Gilbert borrowed a waitress's tray to stockpile glasses of wine in anticipation of the open bar shutting down. Lenny, Chaps, and the boys dispatched of a constant supply of flügerl buckets, which they sucked down with two-foot straws. Hannah was dancing on a tabletop, and inter-university snogging was rampant.

On the final morning, I caught up with George, of the Varsity Trip Committee, who was just a few hours removed from frolicking in lederhosen at the Farewell Party. His wide smile at the day of skiing ahead belied his exhaustion. "I've slept in restaurants, on floors, on stairs, and I'm wankered," he confided. "But that's what it's all about in the end. We have a good laugh."
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