“Are we having another round?” I looked across the table at my two friends expectantly. We were having some after work margaritas, and discussing the finer points of locker room gossip at the ski resort we all work at. We were already a couple of margaritas in and contemplating going night skiing. “I got this round,” my buddy said.

After finishing our last drink, we made our way to the locker room to get changed, where I struggled to get my boots on. “Maybe night skiing isn’t the greatest idea,” I thought to myself.

Within seconds of making my first turn I knew that I was a little too buzzed to be on my snowboard. The snow had been baking in the higher than normal temps all day, and had now become a sheet of solid ice after freezing when the temps dropped in the evening.  Between my state of mind and the conditions, I was struggling. I was glad we were the only ones night skiing. Everyone else had been smart enough to stay home.

I’m sure it was a sight to see: the loud “skkkkshhhhhhhh” sounds of my edges on the ice, arms flailing to try to keep from sliding out, the “ope ope ope’s” as I almost ate it turn after turn. I finally made it to the bottom of a run I usually fly down about ten minutes later.

I spotted a ski patrol friend of mine. “Hey Mandy! Wanna ride up with us?” Would she notice we weren’t exactly sober?

As we neared the top of the lift, Mandy asked if we wanted to hang out in the ski patrol cabin for a second and meet a few of her friends. “Come in and say hello!” It was nearing time for last chair, but we decided to visit for a few minutes and get warm.

After some banter and a few quick words on safety, my buddy, with a mischievous look in his eye, suggested that we duck the rope and head down a non-lighted run to the bottom. “Are we allowed to do that?” I looked over at my friend Mandy. Her and Dan looked at each other and shrugged. “Sure,” she said. “We don’t know anything about it.”

I 'd only ever snowboarded on the lighted runs at night. As I started to strap in, Roberto looked back and me and said “watch out for moose.”

I knew that there was a family of moose that hung out on the north side of the resort along one of the cat tracks, but I wasn’t very excited at the idea of colliding with one half blind in the dark and being subsequently stomped to death while childhood memories of Rocky and Bullwinkle flashed before my eyes.

Resolved to see this adventure through to the end, I turned, ducked the rope, and started making my way down the lead in to the run. I thought I heard someone yelling.

As we neared the horizon line that marked the beginning of our descent down the steep pitch, the lights from the town appeared and spread out before me in a dazzling display against the night sky.

I stood for several moments at the top taking it all in. I was no longer conscious of how cold I was, or that I was still buzzed and probably making some pretty reckless decisions. I was completely lost in what I was looking at.

I reluctantly took my eyes from the view I had been so transfixed by to look down the run for the first time. Moguls. The feel good moment was over. 

It hadn't occurred to us that the snowcats hadn’t started grooming operations for the evening.

I was still a little buzzed, it was dark, I was probably going to get trampled to death by a moose at any moment, and I was running a black diamond that consisted of nothing but ice and moguls. How I made it down that run in one piece is still a mystery to me, but as the run began to flatten out a little bit, I relaxed and started cruising down the run-out.

As I rounded the corner I realized that there was a fence across the run. In all of our drunken banter and shenanigans we had forgotten that there had been a race earlier that day and they had fenced off the bottom part of the run we were on. My only option to avoid the fence was to cut to the right up the bank and run under the tracks of the mountain coaster.

Just as I was about to cut under the coaster and back onto the run, my board found some ice and I was suddenly lying on my back in the snow. I chuckled to myself as I started to get up. I looked over at the fence next to me that separated the racecourse from the other runs and realized that someone in a uniform was standing on the other side.

“Let me see some passes now!”

Normally, I try to be fairly respectful of the rules of the workplace, but losing my pass wasn’t something I was willing to risk with this guy. From my side of the fence I looked at him and simply replied “hell no, boy.”

 I don’t think I’ve ever gone faster. I undid my bindings as fast as I could at the base and spotted Roberto.

“Just go. Just go. Just go,” he said. We giggled our way to the locker room and changed as quickly as we could. We hoped that if someone were looking that they wouldn’t recognize us in our normal clothes. Mandy appeared as we sat at the bus stop and offered to give us a ride home. We all had a good laugh about it. No longer paranoid about getting caught my mind drifted back to the view from the top.

I slept well that night.

My coworkers and I at our weekly margarita night. Thoughts as blurry as the picture.