Why Skiers Are Ending the Season With a Splash—and Keeping the Raucous Tradition of Pond Skimming Alive
For nearly 100 years, die-hards have been saying goodbye to winter by speeding down the slopes and water skiing over massive puddles
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Down a wet blanket of rain and sticky snow came a lineup of costumed skiers and snowboarders, plunking into a freezing pond like little ducklings.
Dozens of wipeouts later, all was not lost. A flash of orange came bombing down—a skier in coveralls (no undershirt) and a Maine “Moxie” hat, holding up a rubber lobster in his fishing glove. Colby Ray, of Saco, Maine, was still standing on the opposite side of the 60-foot pond. Despite unpredictable slush conditions, he’d avoided sinking waist-deep in meltwater at the annual “pond skim” last Saturday at the Sunday River ski resort in Newry, Maine—and, most importantly, the crowd was stoked.
This month, après-ski parties of this unruly sort are taking over the slopes across North America to celebrate downhill skiing’s legendary pond skim. On the season’s closing days, skiers and riders take their turn gaining speed down to the base of the slope, bending their knees and water skiing over a lake, pond or colossal puddle, just hoping to absorb the shock on the other side. If they make it across dry, the crowd goes wild. If they faceplant and sink, the wolfpack howls louder.
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Everyone shows up decked out in neon, Hawaiian shirts, inflatables and bikinis. There’s body paint, barbecues and bands. Some ponds are built with jumps or rails for extra difficulty. On May 19, at the 95th annual Slush Cup at Sunshine Village in Banff, Alberta, where the tradition began, synchronized swimmers are even kicking off the skim in a six-foot-deep pond.
“What started as a campy year-end staff event over decades became our big party of 5,000 or 6,000 people coming to say goodbye to winter with us on the slopes,” says Kendra Scurfield, whose family bought Sunshine Village in 1981.
Pond skimming reminds skiers and riders of why they fell in love with the winter sports in the first place: because it’s fun and irreverent, explains Steve Magaña, who regularly snowboards at Arapahoe Basin near Keystone, Colorado. Just wax up and be prepared for soggy boots.
“It’s an absolute must party for every true ski bum to test and prove the skills we’ve practiced all year,” says Magaña, who’s pond skimmed more times than he can remember and has snowboarded over 165 days just this season alone. “If you’ve ridden enough powder, it won’t be a problem. And there is nothing more healing for the human body than a natural cold plunge.”
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Pond skimming’s humble origins in Banff
There’s always a story. In the late 1800s, the industrialist William Cornelius Van Horne kept his promise to connect the Canadian Rockies with eastern Canada by building the first Canadian transcontinental railway, famously declaring, “If you can’t export the scenery, we’ll import the tourists.” Into Alberta’s Banff National Park came new summer lodging, including the Canadian Pacific Railway cabin—where two Banff Ski Club buddies decided to stay one night.
There, while out skiing Banff’s backcountry, these friends—Cyril Paris and Cliff White—stumbled upon a small pool of meltwater and dared each other to cross.
“One looked at the other and said, ‘Hold my beer,’” says Scurfield. The two friends straight-lined it down the hill, crossing the freezing murky puddle. Only one made it out dry. “No one knows which,” she adds. That was just a few years after water skis were patented and the first ski resorts came to North America.
This May, the Slush Cup party will carry on in the heart of Sunshine Village at that same spot Paris and White first pond skimmed, off Paris Basin trail in front of the cabin where they stayed, now called Mad Trappers Pub.
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Slush Cup goes viral
It wasn’t until the 1950s that pond skimming became a global movement. Filmmaker Warren Miller was just starting to produce his yearly feature-length ski movie, showing it on big screens in halls and theaters across the country to rev up die-hards right before ski season. In 1954 came Miller’s first black-and-white footage of scantily clad contestants balancing across Terminal Lake at Washington’s Mount Baker in leather boots on skinny skis.
“The combination of high-altitude, hot July sun, high blood-alcohol content and wobbly legs offered some fantastic, never-before-seen crashes for my next year’s feature-length ski film audiences,” Miller, then 90 years old, wrote in 2015. “In the 60 years since my showing that 1954 Slush Cup at Mount Baker, this has become a tradition at almost every ski resort in the world to try and replicate.”
By the 1990s, pond skimming had become a bona fide ride-or-die rite of passage for spring skiers at Palisades Tahoe, then Squaw Valley, in the Sierra Nevada range. There, it was the brainchild of Jean Hagan, who, after watching ski patrollers skim Tahoe’s Lake Cushing as an end-of-season tradition, decided to challenge visitors to a pond skim, hoping to draw them back to the bars and restaurants she ran in the Palisades base lodge.
“While most modern pond skims rely on man-made pools, this event takes place on a naturally formed mountain pond named after resort founder Alex Cushing,” says Patrick Lacey, public relations manager at Palisades Tahoe. “Nestled at the base of the slopes in Olympic Valley, the pond’s chilly waters have been the proving ground for decades of outrageous costumes, daring attempts and unforgettable moments, through spills and thrills.”
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It’s the high-elevation après-ski spots that take the cake for the biggest slush cups, like Quebec’s Mont Tremblant, Colorado’s Breckenridge and the informal cross-when-you-feel-like-it pond skim on Lake Reveal at Arapahoe Basin—still Magaña’s favorite: “See you out at A-Basin’s closing day party,” he adds. “Just watch out for rocks.” This year, all three will keep the spring ski party going with extended seasons, after getting a good dumping.
“If we get these late-season turns in, which we typically do thanks to our high base elevation, we get to see the lake and test our skills on the all-natural, slushy pond skim,” says Shayna Silverman, marketing communications manager at Arapahoe Basin.
Some are built with launches to encourage jumping, while others follow the slope—like at Breckenridge, with its “takeoff” flowing right into the pond for momentum. “Most people trying to do any tricks generally go swimming,” says Keith McHugh, Breckenridge’s supervisor of competition services who always builds the pond skim forgivingly, hoping for a 60 percent success rate. “A few X Games and Dew Tour athletes have shown up,” adds McHugh. “We’ve seen Moses parting the sea, Jesus ‘walking on water,’ sharks, pirates and a lot of island-themed outfits.” And now, for the first time, the resort’s pond skim with live music will be held over two days, April 26 and 27, at the base of Peak 8.
Other resorts are finally jumping in—like Utah’s Park City Mountain, which just hosted its third annual pond skim—and then there are those returning to their roots, like Big Sky. After a five-year hiatus starting during the Covid-19 pandemic, on April 26, Montana’s behemoth of a mountain will resume its 20-year pond skimming tradition with a DJ followed by après in the Mountain Village Plaza.
“The Pond Skim is so back with big upgrades, including a new mid-mountain venue at the base of the Bowl—some of Big Sky’s most scenic terrain,” says Big Sky spokesperson Megan Munley.
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But the art of the pond skim doesn’t have to be executed thousands of feet above sea level to charm the ski pants off a crowd. Shortly after the Appalachian Mountain Club began skiing New Hampshire’s backcountry and the Civilian Conservation Corps cut Vermont’s first trails at what’s now Stowe, New England was pond skimming, too. One of its earliest events took place at Vermont’s Sugarbush shortly after the mountain opened in 1958, with Sunday River joining the fun in the 1990s followed by Sugarloaf in 2013. The Maine resort’s East Coast Pond Skim Championship takes place this Saturday. Smaller local mountains also make just as big of a splash at resorts like Ski Sundown in New Hartford, Connecticut, and Gunstock, in Gilford, New Hampshire, with its BYODC (bring your own dry clothes) Pond Skim.
Only skimming the surface
Scurfield, who attends Sunshine Village’s Slush Cup every year, has only competed once, skimming and sinking in the 110-foot-long pond in a 1980s ski bunny getup. “It was the coldest I’ve ever been,” she says, “and I’m Canadian.” Her uncle skied across maybe 40 times and never once made it.
But of all the hot doggers to enter Sunshine Village’s Slush Cup, one stands out—Tyler Turner, a Paralympian who came full circle from contestant to judge after losing both legs below the knee in 2017.
“Every spring I’m there for the Slush Cup—and always finding puddles in the woods to skim across to celebrate the season,” says the 2022 Winter Paralympics gold medalist in men’s snowboard cross. “Get dressed up and look a little silly, but I’m a skills guy. I want to see you go for it, whether it’s tricks in or out of the pool. Don’t be too cool for it.”
It took a ski instructor—Harriet Lucas, who is now trying to qualify for the North American Freeride World Tour—to win Banff’s Slush Cup in the women’s category last year.
“I found a disco ball helmet and sewed a foil survival blanket onto my raincoat shiny-side-up and decided I would be a disco ball,” says Lucas, who grew up in England and was a ski instructor in Austria before moving to Banff in 2021. “I knew I had to go fast. Staying balanced slightly in the middle of the ski actually helped, and I managed to jump, then skim across the pond.”
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While every pond skim is not scored equally, judges typically weigh a combination of distance, technique, tricks, style, creativity and the crowd’s reaction to pick out the winners.
No one knows for sure who holds the record for the longest pond skim in the world, without an international skim-off. “We would absolutely love there to be a competition circuit between various mountains, and if any other mountain does host a Slush Cup, we would give entry to their winner,” says Scurfield.
But what is clear is that in 2011 a freeskier who once competed in the Freeride World Tour named Philippe Troubat successfully skimmed 509 feet on Lake Confins at France’s La Clusaz ski resort.
“I established a new unofficial world record,” says Troubat, revealing his secret weapon, “… on a mono-ski.”
Meanwhile, the 213-foot-long pond skim at Quebec’s Val-D’Irene ski resort, after descending 700 feet into Lake Picalo, lays claim to the longest pond skim run in North America.
All this is to say that the longest in the world may have actually taken place in the woods, where more skiers than ever are now skimming the backcountry meltwater all spring long—just like the Slush Cup pioneers, Cyril Paris and Cliff White.
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