PRICE CHAMBERS
The “sport” of gelande quaffing, where participants slide a mug of beer down a table to a waiting teammate—who must catch it mid-air and drink it—was founded at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in 1986.
The year was 1986. An epic dump—fourteen feet—was too much for patrol to keep up with. Backcountry avalanche conditions were unsafe. There was snow but no way to access it, and skiers were going stir-crazy. Drinking was a way to alleviate boredom, and the Bear Claw Café—a favorite hangout of the Jackson Hole Air Force (JHAF), an informal brother- and sisterhood of hard-core local skiers whose motto is “Swift. Silent. Deep.”—was packed. The bartender sent a beer sliding down the bar. The JHAF skier it was meant for didn’t see it coming until the glass had passed him and flown off the end of the bar. It was surely going to crash to the floor. But he caught it. And drank it. Gelande quaffing was born. Today, gelande quaffing has become official. There is an annual world championship held in Teton Village. Qualifying events are held from Whistler to Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and California. Teams of four work in pairs that stand at opposite ends of a polished bar, waiting for a teammate—the pitcher—to send a pint-size stein, filled with beer, sliding down to the waiting quaffer. The quaffer must catch and then chug—quaff—the beer. The pairs rotate and repeat. In the first round, each team has two minutes to complete as many quaffs as possible. Style points are awarded for catches involving athleticism, artistry, and/or imagination: Spectators are often treated to 360-degree rotations and under-the-leg snags. Puking results in immediate disqualification; quaffers are required to drink the beer, not wear it.
Slide, Catch, Drink
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JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2014
the ski bums, patrollers, cowboys, and Mormons were all segregated.” Each group had its own scene. Bernie’s Boom Boom Room was the most exclusive après-ski spot—for patrollers and their invited guests only. Really just a keg of beer in the patrol’s locker room under the tram—imagine piles of skis lining the walls, boots opened up to dry, and heaps of whitecrossed red jackets—Bernie’s Boom Boom Room was named after two things: 1) John Bernadyn (Bernie), who was a post-work fixture in the locker room until he retired in 1996 at age seventy. 2) A big table in the center of the space was where, each morning, patrollers sat and inserted fuses into explosives used for snow control (Boom Boom). Patrollers bought “season passes” for the keg, which was always tapped. With his season pass—JHMR ski patrol was all-male until 1978 when Melissa Malm was hired on—a patroller could drink all the beer he wanted all season long. “That season pass hurt a lot of people,” patroller Robert Nelson says in the book Jackson Hole: On a Grand Scale by David Gonzales. Ski bums moved around. There was the speakeasy darkness of The Pub in the basement of the Sojourner Inn. The Mangy Moose, which was a drafty beer joint in the early days after its opening in 1967, was popular with ski bums, too. Within a couple of years came the Seven Levels bar and Bear Claw Café, which later was renamed the Village Café. All of these places had cheap food and beer and didn’t prioritize matching furniture or ambiance, all selling points with ski bums. “The Pub at the Sojourner had a set of icy, dark stairs leading down to the bar,” ski instructor Rusty Hall says. “You had to know where it was. The place had low ceilings, a pool table, and pizza by the slice. Everything was cheap if the bartenders weren’t giving it away. Sometimes people would end up spending the night sleeping on the couch there. It was mostly a locals’ hangout, mostly a bunch of guys.” RESORT AND TETON Pass crowds mixed at Calico Pizza, which was in an old Mormon church relocated to a site on the Village Road. Calico opened in 1966. According to local legend, the price of the church, before moving it to Wilson