My perfect New Year’s Eve goes like this.
North Carolina gets a freak snow storm that dumps 16 inches of snow on the mountains. This is actually the second big snowstorm of the Holiday Season. The first storm dropped a foot, which quickly froze, so what I’m really talking about is a solid 12-inch base with 16 inches of powder on top. Everyone is freaking out. You can’t find a loaf of bread in the grocery store anywhere. Idiots start posting “well, so much for global warming” on Facebook.
Anyway, there’s a ton of snow for New Year’s Eve, so I head to the Appalachian Trail along the N.C./Tenn. border and ski a solid 10 miles throughout the day to a shelter, drinking hot chocolate and eating salmon jerky. It’s one of the really nice shelters with a hot tub. Waiting for me there are a half-dozen friends, a massive bonfire, and a tub full of Miller High Life. Because it’s New Year’s and the High Life is the “champagne of beers.” Okay, there’s some bourbon too. Maybe some Bowman Brothers small batch, from J. Bowman Brothers distillery in Virginia. We drink, we burn stuff in the fire, we ski laps on the perfectly gladed slopes behind the A.T. shelter with headlamps, and retreat to the well-placed hot tub around midnight to toast 2014 and say goodbye to 2013 under the dark sky.
In my humble opinion, this is the perfect New Year’s celebration, containing the three key elements: adventure, booze, and a well-placed hot tub. It’ll probably never happen (my fingers are crossed, but I’m not holding my breath for those back to back snowstorms), but I’m gonna do my best to make sure my New Year’s Eve/Day are packed with the three key elements—booze, adventure, and getting half naked in hot water. I hope you find your own trifecta of fun to ring in the New Year.
