Back to the beach

ARAPAHOE BASIN - If you want to have a beach party in Colorado, you'd better bring your own sand. And it helps to bring a lot.

"I figured I needed about three tons," Jim Roberts said Saturday as he shuttled wheelbarrows of the stuff from a trailer in the predawn, 18-degree air and spilled them out on the edge of the ski slopes.

Roberts is the guy in charge of the annual spring party for Colorado Springs' Sno Jets Ski and Social Club - one of thousands of tailgate "beach" parties Arapahoe Basin hosts along the front row of its parking lot. And in this beach-challenged state, Roberts always makes sure his party is the Big Kahuna.

That meant, besides sand, hauling in a fire pit, wood, fake palm trees, a karaoke machine, surfboards, beach umbrellas, rainbow-colored wind socks, banners, crates of bananas and strawberries and a hand-crank blender for daiquiris, three beer kegs, 15 supersize bottles of rum and tequila, enough box wine for a year's worth of book club meetings, a case of Cracker Jack, a trailermounted grill big enough to roast a yeti, and 200 plastic leis - just to set the mood.

"Every year we try to top last year," said Roberts, a masonry contractor in Colorado Springs. "Last year we had grass huts. I was going to try to do a cabana this year, but the wind is giving us issues."

To be ready for the 150 guests he expected to show up in ski boots and Hawaiian shirts, he started setting up at 6 a.m.

It sounds a little crazy to throw a beach party at 10,800 feet, where even on nice days the temperature rarely climbs above freezing, but the Sno Jets have plenty of competition.

Partying at the A-Basin beach has become a Colorado tradition, when skiers and snowboarders celebrate the end of a good season with buddies, beer, burgers - and maybe a little skiing.

Beach season can stretch from late February to early June when the ski area closes, but it is most lively in April.

To make sure he got a spot, Roberts nabbed two of four reservable spaces a year in advance, plunking down $200. Down the beach, others showed up by starlight to grab free spots.

"We pulled up at 5:45. We opened the first beers at 5:46," said Dustin Nere, a skier from Denver.

Scoring a spot next to the slopes is key to throwing a beach ski party, he said. Skiing is optional.

"I probably only do two or three runs," Nere said. "It's more about hanging out."

Besides, the ocean of beer revelers drink doesn't make for precise skiing.

"The first three beers I consider turning fluid," Nere said. "But from there it goes downhill pretty quick."

As the sun peeked over a jagged, snow-covered ridge at about 9 a.m., the party started to warm up.

Beers were cracked. Tunes were cranked. A man raised a Bob Marley flag above his camper while clouds of marijuana smoke puffed from the windows. Dogs spilling from parked cars formed a pack galloping across the snow.

Cutting loose in the last few weeks of the ski season is not unique to A-Basin. By April, out-of-state tourists are gone and seasonal employees are ready to blow off some steam.

Monarch has a crashheavy kayak race on the snow. Vail holds a pondskimming contest where skiers in ridiculous costumes try to skip across an icy pool of water while rowdy crowds howl for face plants. On the last day of the season, Breckenridge throws a party called the Bump Buffet, where teams wearing coordinated costumes and under varying levels of inebriation ski moguls for prizes.

But no event captures the laid-back zaniness of the season like the beach.

Want to wear a huge, colored Afro or a bodylength banana suit and still fit in? This is the place. Been dying to get 30 friends together to show off the finest neon ski suits from 1989? This is your audience.

So many people are hanging out and drinking beer on the beach come April that the lift lines are nothing compared with the line for the bathroom.

No one is sure when beach parties began at the 61-year-old ski area. They attracted newspapers' attention in the early 1980s, but likely started long before.

Ski patrollers say widespread drunkenness typically isn't a problem on the slopes. Most skiers don't feel like skiing once the beach really heats up.

At the Sno Jets soiree, daiquiris ran out at 1 p.m., and the kegs were draining fast. Club members who skied in the morning now packed the beach.

"This is when things tend to get a little crazy," said longtime club member Paula Sollenberger.

She started to tell a story about the time, a few years ago, when she brought out a dead goldfish dressed in sideburns and a guitar (the theme that year was Elvis) and got a crowd of 100 to try to bring it back to life by singing "Amazing Grace." But she was interrupted.

"Who wants to do a shotski?" someone yelled, hoisting a ski with four shot glasses attached.

The shotski naturally led to human bowling, where sledders careened into 10 oversize plastic bowling pins.

Human bowling naturally led to more shotskis.

"We used to all do a run wearing Speedos, which wasn't a pretty picture, and less and less so over the years," said Sollenberger's husband, Randy. "But we still usually go up on the hill and moon the rest of the beach at the end of the day."

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0223 or dave.philipps@gazette.com

THE LAST HURRAHS

• Arapahoe Basin beach - Every weekend until close. A high-altitude tailgate party where skiers bring grills, stereos, Frisbees and just about anything you'd take to a real beach party. Free spots along this alpine "Riviera" typically fill up by 6 a.m. Reserve a spot well in advance for $100 by calling 1-970-513-5701.

• Vail's World Pond Skimming Championships - Saturday, 2-4 p.m.
See 100 of the bravest, most ridiculously dressed people shoot down a slope, then try to skim across a man-made pond on skis, vying for a $1,000 prize.

• Copper Mountain's free George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic concert - Saturday.

Copper's Sunsation year-end fest has lots of free, live music and some of the deepest snow of the year. www.coppersunsation.com

• Monarch Spring Cook-off - Sunday. Tailgate, grill and party on Monarch's final day with a live band and prizes awarded for best food and decor.

• Winter Park's '80s Day and Spring Splash - Saturday. Dust off your finest Day-Glo, skinny skis and old school onepieces for this end-of-season ski day. Costume contest at the plaza, 1 p.m. The Spring Splash pond skimming race is at noon Sunday. SKI

RESORT CLOSING DAYS

Aspen Highlands - April 27
Aspen Mountain - Sunday
Beaver Creek - Sunday
Breckenridge - April 20
Copper Mountain - Sunday
Crested Butte - Sunday Echo
Mountain - May 4
Eldora - Sunday
Keystone - Sunday
Loveland - May TBA
Monarch - Sunday
Silverton Mountain - June 15
Snowmass - Sunday
Vail - Sunday
Winter Park - Sunday
Wolf Creek - April 27