Michelle Berthiaume
Equinox Staff
On Monday night, the Mabel Brown Room filled up with anxious students awaiting the colder weather, immense amounts of snow, and the beginning of the ski season.
Totally Board 20 premiered to Keene State College students, including many members of the Ski and Snowboard Club.
Among these members was the President of the Ski and Snowboard Club, Julia Skelcy. The club meets Monday nights in Morrison Hall, room 101, at 8 p.m.
“We do a bunch of cool things. We provide transportation to either Sunapee, Stratton, or Okemo once a weekend for all those that love the mountains. Also, for the past couple of years, the club has been going on one trip for a long weekend where we stay on the mountain and ski for two days as opposed to just for the day. We are going to try and do that again this year but our budget was recently cut by $2,000, so hopefully we can still do that,” Skelcy said.
TB20 ran about 45 minutes and most of the students stayed for the entire film. The film featured hundreds of snowboarders from all across the country shredding at their favorite mountains. The snowboarders tore apart slopes of some of the most famous mountains in the world. Some shots were even taken in urban settings where snowboarders were shown grinding long stairwell railings and picnic tables.
Snowboarders had their own five to ten minute video that were put together to create the entire film. The film featured snowboarders including Halldor Helgason, Sammy Luebke, Blair Habenicht, Mark Carter, Kimmy Fasani, Ryan Tiene, Torstein Horgmo, Raewyn Reid, and many more. Some of the featured locations in the video were Stockholm, Switzerland, Jackson Hole, Montana, Sierra at Tahoe, Stranda and Oslo, Norway and Silverton, Colorado.
The film showing was sponsored by the S.O.S. pass. The S.O.S. pass allows college students to ski or snowboard at Stratton Mountain, Mount Sunapee, and Okemo Mountain all season long for a discounted rate. If students purchased their S.O.S. pass at the showing of TB20, they received the pass for only $295.
College students enrolled in at least 12 credits worth of classes, a full time student’s class load, at any school, can purchase the S.O.S. pass until Dec. 19 for only $299.
After that, the pass goes up to $319 for students. The pass includes free skiing at all mountains during any day of the winter, with no black out dates.
Skelcy brought the S.O.S. team here for Keene State students to premiere their TB20 video.
“I organized the video premiere. I called Sarah Ebbett, the Okemo College representative. And she got the rest of the S.O.S. crew together and they brought their TB20 movie to premiere which was pretty cool,” Skelcy said.
Sponsors from Burton, Never Summer Industries, Elan, Bern, Contour, Nike 6.0, Swany Performance Gloves, Spy, and Coldpruf Base Layer donated prizes for those in attendance.
The prizes included two pairs of gloves, three t-shirts, a new helmet, a pair of goggles, five hats, and much more.
Every student was given a raffle ticket at the door and one student even walked off with a brand new pair of skis. All students also walked away with a handful of stickers from the sponsoring mountains.
Okemo will open on Nov. 19. This year they will be featuring an array of new park features.
A lot of parks have been moved around and a rope tow has been added to the most popular park, the Dew Park. Okemo also got some brand new snow guns this year to try and bring their snow making ranking up from number three, behind Mount Sunapee.
Mount Sunapee will open Nov. 25, the day after Thanksgiving. This year, Mount Sunapee was again rated number two in snow making in the Northeast.
“It’s terrific to keep winning this award. We have an excellent team and they really work hard at grooming and snow making every year. It’s all about consistency for most of our riders. And they love that we are the most consistent,” Sales Manager for Mount Sunapee, Mae Leonard, said.
Mount Sunapee will also host a concert again this year on the mountain but this time the headlining band will be performing two days in a row.
Stratton opens Nov. 23 for all skiers and snowboarders.
This year, Stratton will again host the Burton U.S. Open the second weekend in March.
“It’s awesome to host this event. We are sort of considered one of the birth places of snowboarding so to continually host this event year after year is huge and a lot of fun. It’s actually our thirtieth year hosting this event,” Stratton Representative Adam Wanamaker said.
Stratton will also play host to the U.S. Freestyle skiing championships the last weekend in March.
Keene State College students are patiently awaiting the first weekend at their favorite mountains and this kicked off the season for most of them.
The Ski and Snowboard Club, in particular, is ready to get out on the slopes and the members won’t have to wait much longer.
Michelle Berthiaume can be contacted at mbertiaume@ksc.mailcruiser.con