Students hit the slopes, become inebriated, play thumb war during weekend ski trip

“If you fall asleep, you’re going to wake up on the side of the freeway,” yells the upperclassman driver at the helm of a standard-issue rental minivan to the groggy passenger sitting shotgun in the last car out to Tahoe on Friday night.

After a failed attempt at getting her passengers to sing “99 bottles of beer on the wall” through to the end, the driver, her eyes drooping, now wishes that she could have back the same cracked out group of students from three hours prior–the ones who wouldn’t stop scanning the radio stations looking for “Tick Tock,” “Bad Romance” and “Party in the USA,” screaming with joy and belting out the tune every time they were successful.

After battling MLK weekend traffic out of the Bay Area and braving a long and winding ascent through Eldorado National Forest, the seven students in the car wake up to the shimmering lights of South Lake Tahoe.

“Whoaaaa…I’m really glad we’re seeing this view at night, otherwise I would be freaking out,” exclaims the driver, appreciating the extra illusion of safety from the canyon’s depths provided by the wall of accumulated plowed snow.

By the time the late van reaches the log mansion’s blazing lights, the annual scramble for beds has already been complete and all that remains are empty spots on the shag carpet, colored a puke-friendly orange and brown.

One slightly tipsy junior, clearly having enjoyed activities that severely impaired his rhyming abilities, teases a late-comer.

Robby Dobby was a bear, Robby Dobby…doesn’t-get-a-bed-because-he-came-late!”

Luckily, the four-hour drive leaves the late passengers tired and impervious to the cacophony of snoring in the bunk bed room, for the few precious hours of sleep before the 7 a.m. wakeup call for skiing.

“Hey, wanna go sledding so you can bruise your crotch again like last year?” announces a sophomore, remembering the sight of her friend wrapped around the trunk of a pine after plowing down a small hill in the backyard.

A large contingent of non-skiers keeps themselves entertained at the house on Saturday. They knit and destroy the kitchen, making meat smoothies and sriracha pancakes. They sled down hills on cookie sheets and trash can lids and realize that trying to catch a fish with your bare hands leads to accidentally becoming a member of the Lake Tahoe polar bear club.

And a studious few make productivity nests in the solitude of the master bedroom closet to complete enough homework before the Saturday night festivities.

The skiers had headed out much earlier, awoken by various tactics like getting slapped in the face with a hot waffle, having whoopee cushion expelled into their ears and feeling the cold tip of a permanent pen dancing across their foreheads.

“Even my wallet clenched its butt cheeks when I heard the price of the lift ticket…but SO worth it,” says one sophomore on her second ski trip, as the skiers and snowboarders of various levels of skill and coordination, pockets stuffed with chewy bars, wait to be manhandled by the gondola ushers at Heavenly.

“OMG I FREAKING HATE LITTLE KIDS,” declares one frustrated junior, sliding on his butt down the bunny slope as a six-year-old skier zoomed past, spraying a wave of snow in his face with a laugh.

Fortunately he has it better than his friend, who made the mistake of accepting his Swedish dorm mate’s offer to teach her to ski. After only a two-minute lesson on the bunny slope, she finds herself jerking down the moguls on a black run as his dorm mate zig-zags around her yelling encouragement.

Another friend becomes intimate with the California-Nevada border, temporarily giving her yet another bright red waffle pattern on her cheek.

The most unfortunate group causes the lift-to-skyline trail to halt for several minutes after one of the snowboarders exits the lift diagonally, epically tripping all three of his riding mates. As the skiers in the group groan and collect the roughly 5,000 different pieces of disassembled ski equipment, the crowd around the gondola gives them a round of applause for their fail-rific performance.

Back at the cabins, the party has begun.

“OMG WAIT, bears can’t smell beer…CAN THEY???” says one not-so-sober ski tripper. “Because the sign on the fridge says not to leave food outside because of animals…LIKE BEARS.”

“Yeah well, the sign above the toilet says to practice your aim, but you threw that one right out the window, didn’t you?”

The Saturday night shenanigans really take off at 10 p.m., when one staff member fulfills his promise to jump shirtless off the second floor balcony onto the living room couch from a dizzying height of eight feet.

The party is in the basement this time, in light of the recent crackdown on over-packed houses at Lake Tahoe. The basement is an unholy union of Karaoke, “shot”-tar hero and extremely heated thumb wars. Outside, one group is learning the thriftiness of drinking at altitude in a hot tub. They stuff more and more people in until they realize the drain off was sliding down the roof and freezing on the hood of the vans.

Others were having their first drinking experience:

Joe: “Did Jerry have half a beer again?”

Jerry: (hiccups) “No, I had a WHOLE one!”

One by one the partiers nod off, until a small group of boys remain playing a game of pool. The game degenerates into a storytelling session about hunting wild pigs, which degenerates an imitation of wild pig and bird noises. A sophomore girl, half asleep, tosses her slipper at one of the boys’ outstretched buttocks, sending the boys into a frenzy of laughter that puts them to sleep.

In the morning the zombies scrounge for the remnants of bread crusts, a five-pound bag of M&Ms and the bruised fruit that remains in the once-abundant cabinets. The staff members breathe a sigh of relief as the vans depart from the house, where they hope the landlord won’t notice the pair of superhero underwear lodged in the drain of the Jacuzzi.

The late van driver cranks up the radio as the chorus of Lady Gaga plays, thematically beginning the trip home.