New Year’s Eve at Jackson Hole is not the same without the torchlight parade. A bunch of ski instructors go up to the top of the Apre Vous chairlift with road flares, and once it gets dark, everyone lights their flares and skis down the mountain in a giant snake for all the onlookers to enjoy. It is really one of the best parts of New Year’s Eve in a mountain town. Everyone dresses goofy and drinks a few ummm.. La Croixs and has a grand ole time. This particular year I was working my way through the mob of people that was the chairlift line, with all the staff trying to make their way up to the start of the parade. It was a quad chair and I was lined up with 2 or 3 of my friends talking and horsing around as we make our way to the chair. As we got closer, we merged with some other folks and I happened to notice the cute girl that had started working at ski school that year. Determined to smoothly make room for her on our chair I boxed one of my buddies out to make room and asked her if she wanted to ride up with us. The next thing I knew I was getting on the chairlift and I had managed to totally ditch my friends and it was just her and me. “Alright man, play it cool!”, I had to tell myself. We chatted the whole lift ride up and I was entertained by the childlike wonder she had as she looking behind her at the mountains as they burned red with the setting sun; the bright red warmth in stark contrast to the crisp winter air that filled our lungs. As we got off the lift at the top, greeted by an increasingly rowdy part of ski bums with fireworks, we managed to either purposefully or accidentally loose each other ( neither of us wanted to look too needy, gotta play hard to get). I returned to my buddies who, like all good friends do, gave me a hard time and made assumptions about my motives for ditching them. That girl stayed in the back of my mind though, and we have shared many chairlift rides together since.