30 years ago | Keystone, Colorado, USA | 19th January 1994

Thirty years ago, I did something I haven’t done before or since. Something I didn’t even know was a ‘thing’ until then and which, even now, I don’t think is that widely available. Just as the promotional literature for today’s version says, “there’s absolutely no experience like night skiing”…

Even now, it’s quite unusual to see floodlit ski runs at a resort but im 1994, it felt particularly exotic to be able to take to the slopes under the lights. Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia slightly dents any notion of uniqueness by pointing out that it was first done at Bousquet Ski Arena in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1936. It then lists another eight resorts, all over North America, to have followed suit – including future Winter Olympic host city, Lake Placid, NY, in 1938. By contrast, Keystone opened as a ski resort in 1970 and, in 1985, installed its first floodlights.

Ostensibly, we were in Colorado for an equestrian trade fair in Denver, with a gift fair in New York the week after. For a few days in between, we went skiing in the small resort of Keystone, just over an hour’s drive west of Denver, in the Rocky Mountains. Martin and I had both been on ski trips with school but, aside from one preparatory trip to Rossendale over Christmas, Mum and Dad had never even put on a pair of skis before.

We arrived in the evening and the next morning, Martin and I got our ski passes and took the gondola to the top of the mountain, leaving our parents to the delights of Ski School on the lowest, least inclined slopes.

For the next few days, the tw oof us went up and down the mountain countless times, trying out every run we could find, from the long, meandering ‘Schoolmarm’ (green/’easiest’) to the petrifying ‘Go Devil’ (black/’most difficult’). Intermittently, we’d all meet up over a hot chocolate at the resort restaurants and compare notes. Just as mine first lessons did in Austria, five years previously, my parents’ attempts to learn to ski had involved lots of ungainly, uncertain and slow movements while a seemingly never-ending stream of five year-olds whizzed past. I had been slightly concerned that a five-year interlude might give me a problem but in less than five minutes back on skis, it was as if I’d never been off them.

Thirty years on, I can’t remember if we’d known about the night skiing option at Keystone before we’d arrived. There wasn’t much of an internet to help us plan holidays in those days. I think we may have read something but we only really decided to give it a go once we were there. There was no way we were tempting Mum back onto the slopes in the evening but Dad was just about proficient enough to take on the challenge so, after tea one evening, we put the ski jeans back on and headed for the ski lift.

Martin and I decided that the slow and steady ‘Schoolmarm’ run was most suitable for our party’s least capable member, which reduced any danger and also afforded us the option to video the descent. As you can see from the footage, it wasn’t exactly an adrenaline-fuelled experience but as material for early 90s home videos go, it was pretty good stuff.

Obviously, this sedate route was the one we videoed but Martin and I then made the most of the quieter, more inviting slopes. For safety’s sake, only the least difficult runs were floodlit but that didn’t stop us racing down them as fast as we could. The speed, the etherealness and nothing but the sound of metal edges on ice was a truly special experience.

In between runs, we were back on the ski lift, preparing for the next adrenaline hit and two contemporary references would continually come to my mind, in the silent mountain air. As I looked out across the valley to the moon-lit mountainside opposite, I was reminded of the night scenes in a film I’d seen a few months previously: Cliffhanger, with Sylvester Stallone.

I also gave myself an earworm by thinking that R.E.M. could just as easily have observed that: “Night skiing | Deserves a quiet night…”

And now you have that ear worm…