Skippress - Index

Skippress - US Vol. 7 No. 2 - Index

BY PETER KRAY
62 THE TRAVEL ISSUE 2008
The
Ski Train
Photo: Robert Ashe
As a boy, I used to ride the Ski Train. I rode it to Winter
Park on Saturdays once the snow began to fall. My dad
would drive me down to Central Station where the old
railcars would fi ll with kids smelling of cherry coughdrops
and bubblegum for breakfast. There would be girls from
my class and notes across the aisle.
“You like her, don’t you?”
My friends and I tied bandannas around our legs and wore
down vests over jean jackets because we thought that
looked cool. We ate french fries covered in ketchup, drank
20-ounce Cokes and skied until we broke our goggles, our
poles, our legs. But we went faster every year. And we
rode home in the dark when the emerging city looked like
a million candles at the bottom of a pool.
“When I grow up, I hope I’m a skier.”
“Me too.”
“ From the 1940s until the 1980s, the Denver Ski Train
carried tens of thousands of kids from the city to the
snow. Then the old cars were sold to become the Napa
Valley Wine Train, and a fl eet of modern cars were brought
in to meet the more discerning needs of all those former
ski kids who had become parents and professionals.
Sometimes sitting at my desk, I wish the black peaks of
the Flatirons — the snowy open range of the last of the
plains, and those short, dark tunnels — were passing by
my window.
And that I was on that Ski Train right now.
You like her, don’t you?”
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Photo: Leane Mahanke