With a mission statement of “to shred all the gnars, drink from all the bars, and shoot for the stars,” the Carleton Ski and Snowboard Club has been a mainstay of club activities at the school since its inception in 2004.
The club’s main focus is their weekly trip to Mont Tremblant every Sunday, where a bus takes members of the club from Carleton for a day of skiing and snowboarding.
“As long as the hill is open, we try and get up there once a week,” said club president Daniel Beamish-Lavoie.
The club also hosts “Jib” sessions every Wednesday and Saturday on campus where students can ride the snowpark set up by the club. Originally hosted behind the Ice House, the snowpark was moved to the hill behind the parking garage at the P-7 lot near the entrance to campus.
“It has full metal rails that are sunk into the ground . . . Those are really fun cause it’s free and you just need to sign a waiver,” Beamish-Lavoie said. “When I was in first year, I would go two to three times a week out skiing, which was really awesome because I didn’t have the money to go out to the hill.”
The club also hosts an annual competition at their snow park called Jib Test where riders get the chance to compete in front of a crowd in slopestyle and big air events. Throughout the year, members of the club also take over Babylon nightclub for their Hustle & Snow, and Meltdown parties.
New this past year is weekly night trips to local hill, Camp Fortune, allowing students a more affordable way to get involved with the club.
“The [Camp] Fortune trips are really awesome for [new riders] because one of our friends knows some people there, so we get really discounted rentals and lessons, so to go learn skiing is pretty easy,” Beamish-Lavoie said. “Last year we had a Chinese exchange student who moved to Carleton, and he had never set foot on snow before and now he loves skiing.”
With skill levels ranging from just starting to being on the hills for years, the Ski and Snowboard Club’s goal is to make the experience fun for everyone.
“We try and be really inclusive for anyone beginning skiing,” he added.
The consistent club activities have helped build the Ski and Snowboard Club into one of the largest clubs at Carleton.
“We have almost 200 members signed up this year but our Facebook group has close to 3,000 people in it. I guess we got a pretty big club,” Beamish-Lavoie said.
The club recently hosted its annual Snow Butter overnight trip to Mont Tremblant that involved 112 students spending the weekend at a hotel together.
“We had most of the wing of a hotel . . . everyone was grouped together, you could request a room with whoever you like and just go skiing, go partying, enjoy the aprés ski,” Beamish-Lavoie said.
This year’s Snow Butter trip carried a special meaning for the club.
After Josh Noronha, the former president of the club and the founder of Snow Butter, broke his neck in a trampoline accident over the summer, and ended up paralyzed, the club stepped up to help him out. Due to his employer not having insurance, Noronha’s friends and family started a GoFundMe to help pay for his medical expenses, which has at this point raised over $130,000.
“His legacy has been living on and we did a Panda Game pre-party, and we ended up fundraising nearly $1,000 to his cause,” Beamish-Lavoie said. “We try to help out with that—we could just pocket the money as a club and reinvest it but we thought that giving it to [Noronha] would be a really great idea because he’s given so much to us.”
Students can join the club on their Facebook page to get more information on their weekly trips to Camp Fortune and Mont Tremblant.
“It’s a very recreational club, always very good vibes and we like to enjoy ourselves,” Beamish-Lavoie said.
