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Worth smiling about: 35 years a ski bum

6 min read
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By Dave Bates

For the Observer-Reporter

I ran across an old photo the other day causing me to give pause to my days out west. As I perused the picture, I was taken back by the smile on my face. Prior to my Emma being born, I didn’t have many smiling shots of myself as a younger man. Maybe a dozen in the first 20 years of my life.

I’ll share with you as to why this smile appeared so large upon my face. As I am writing this, the snow is falling heavily outside my office window and transports me back to my mountains in the best of ways. A smile is forming as I write these words.

These are the confessions of a ski bum. “Once Upon a Time… I was a Colorado ski bum for three winters.” It sounds a lot more glamorous than it really is. A ski bum is someone poor enough and adventurous enough who has relatively no responsibilities in life and doesn’t mind displacing themselves from their comfortable home and surroundings because their home is not all that comfortable and their surroundings aren’t much to write about either. With virtually no adult responsibilities (and no adult chaperones) and qualifying as pretty much broke, I was a shoo-in for the lifestyle.

I graduated from Waynesburg in the spring of 1988. My fairy godmother, Janet Brown, financed my education since midterm of my sophomore year. Full ride. In my final semester she would bring me into her office for a sit down. She would gently explain that soon I would be a well-educated, white trash, college graduate. Apparently, I did not speak nor dress so well, and had quite a bit to learn about life. She encouraged me to take on a series of jobs (cannery boat, ranch hand and ski bum) which she would arrange. These experiences would serve as my finishing school.

The jobs would start in Alaska in the summer, work my way back to a ranch in New Mexico in the fall and end with a few months of skiing in Colorado. Two of the three jobs failed to materialize, thankfully, and she set me up with a former student from her days as a teacher at a Quaker school in Philadelphia. Gates Lloyd was a ski instructor during the winter at Keystone Ski Resort and worked as a carpenter in the offseason, giving him instant credibility as someone who actually knew Janet Brown. I paid a month’s rent in advance to some of his buddies and drove myself west in early October. My rental house was shared with three roommates and it looked a lot like my car.

My Datsun 510 was purchased with funds from an insurance settlement stemming from a motorist striking me on my motorcycle while returning from student teaching. The settlement was a pittance. At best my ride could be described as suspect, but we made the 1,500-mile journey, together. At least, that is, to my front door where my radiator overheated on the evening of my arrival. It cost me the last 50 bucks that Uncle Blair forced me to take for painting a couple of rooms in his house. I ate baloney and day-old bread from County Market for the first month until I drew pay. But I didn’t come to Colorado to eat, I came to ski. And ski I did. From the opening of the first slope on Oct. 15, I skied every day. By season’s end, I would ski nearly 130 days per season, every year of my trek.

My promised job as a “ski instructor” translated into ski day care for munchkins. Naive at best, I reported to work on the mountain the morning after my arrival. The director of skier services informed me that a “hiring clinic” would be held in 30 days and I should return then. In a rather heated discussion I informed him that my trust fund had not panned out and that I needed immediate employment. He put me to work at the rental shop “temporarily.” I never left the rental shop position and taught skiing on the side.

After one season in the rental shop, being the “mature” guy at the age of 22, I received a promotion to what I still consider the best job on the mountain: Night shop manager. Ski all day. Work afternoon shift, 3-11. Drink beer all night. Sleep if and when possible. Sundays and Mondays off. My best friend, Thomas Stewart, was a Mahre Clinic instructor (you remember Phil and Steve, the twin U.S. Olympic medalists from 1984 Sarajevo fame) so I got free ski lessons every day until I became a passable skier.

Ski resorts in those days operated on a sort of beer economy. Since I was permitted to tune skis off the clock and everyone in the resort needs ski tuning, in essence, I inherited the job of godfather, completely by accident. And it was all legal, if not entirely ethical or moral. And I never lacked for a thing. I was still broke but always had enough. Tune a pair of skis, set them out back of the shop and little ski elves would replace the skis with a case of green bottled beer, the gold standard. The staff at the best restaurants and bars would not think of accepting my gratuity. Everyone needed ski tuning.

We day skied. We night skied. We skied out of bounds. We carried ordnance for the ski patrol, like billy goats, in exchange for rides on the snow cat. Occasionally, the helicopter had a vacant seat and we made sure it didn’t remain vacant for long. Our favorite pastime was a ski assault via pickup truck of Loveland Pass on full-moon nights.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights were reserved for western swing dancing and two stepping at the Old Dillon Inn. My Stetson and cowboy boots were properly broken in by Marilyn and Mary Ellen, my waitress/dance partners who took pity on me as the poor kid from back east who danced about as poorly as he skied.

The dog’s water began to freeze inside the house because of lack of heat so I began my search for new digs. When my boss became my new roommate – an old guy around 40 who had a log cabin with a spare room in back – things got even better. I moved into Nirvana. Don Sirianni knew everyone and shared every connection he amassed. It was like having a very responsible older, but exceptionally cool, big brother. When my wife, Kelly (then fiance), my mom and my brother took turns visiting it was Disneyland with snow. Every favor was called in.

So, as I sit here with this ear-to-ear grin, staring at this battered old photo. Am I surprised at the guy smiling back at me? Heck no. That was the time of our lives.

Dave Bates writes a weekly outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter. He can be reached at alphaomegashootingsolutions@gmail.com

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