For women, the male-dominated ski world can be a hard one to break into.
That’s why one local resident has created a festival for hundreds of women and femme skiers to come together each year to celebrate their common love for the sport — and participate in a famed naked ski lap that’s become an annual tradition.
This year’s “Boot Tan Fest” took place at Sunlight Mountain near Glenwood Springs last Friday.
It was a cold, snowy day and the visibility was low, but the energy was high.
A DJ bumped tunes and women dressed in colorful ski suits and cowboy chaps, with glitter on their faces, danced and checked out the artist and vendor booths at the base of the mountain.
Carbondale resident Susannah Lickus was there celebrating her birthday and doing laps on the slopes with her friends.
She said it's not everyday that she gets to ski with this many women.
“It's like a breath of fresh air,” Lickus said. “As someone that's had male partners, I feel like on the ski hill for women, sometimes, it's like you're chasing your male partner and it’s super overwhelming.”
Over at the DJ stage, Carbondale resident Jenny Verrochi tells the crowd that’s a big part of why she founded the all-women Boot Tan Fest.
“There’s something about women being together and no male gaze,” Verrochi said. “It is insane, have fun.”
Verrochi grew up on the East Coast where she says skiing in jeans was normal.
“You just work with what you got,” she said. “And skiing's always been a huge part of my family. My parents started a coffee roasting business and we used to trade beans for ski tickets.”
When Verrochi moved out West to start her own coffee company, she struggled to adjust to a new type of ski culture.
“There's a lot of pressure of like, what you're wearing, who you're going to the mountain with, how fast you can ski, et cetera,” she said. “And as a privileged white woman myself who can now finally afford a ski pass, there's still a lot of pressure.”
A few years ago she organized a naked ski photoshoot with a group of women for her “Buck Wild Coffee” brand and she found inspiration for her next venture: an inclusive ski festival and naked lap for anyone who identifies as a woman.
“We really are just trying to get every body shape, every color out there,” Verrochi said. “It's just showing up with the courage to give the woman next to you enough courage to take off their clothes and just feel completely comfortable.”
During the very first Boot Tan Fest at Bluebird Backcountry Resort in Kremmling, only 27 women were in attendance.
Last year, that had grown to 450, and this year at Sunlight, Verrochi estimates there were about 800 women.
“It's been wild,” she said. “It's hard to even wrap my head around what's happening… the vibes are insane.”
While the after-hours naked ski lap is still a highlight of the annual event, Verrochi doesn’t want it to distract from the impact she’s trying to make with her ski festival.
“We're not talking about, you know, burning the patriarchy or burning our bras, but we would like to just change the way that the ski industry is because it is so whitewashed,” she said.
This year, the festival donated 30% of its raffle ticket sales to Edge Outdoors — a nonprofit that offers ski programs for Black, Indigenous and Women of Color.
Nia Brinkley, who was standing in the lift line dressed as “Reptar” from Rugrats, appreciates the effort to be inclusive.
“I mean, I'm a Black woman and there's not many of us, so it's just always kind of weird sometimes just being like the only one, or one of the only ones,” she said. “So it'd be nice to see that change.”
Brinkley, who grew up skiing on small hills in Ohio, is now an instructor as well as an ambassador for a women-owned ski and snowboard company based in Reno, Nevada.
Coalition Snow, which is a sponsor of the festival, offers free demos and recently launched a “pay what you can” model for its gear.
Brinkley said efforts like these – and events like Boot Tan Fest – are slowly moving the needle.
“We got some people of color right here, so yeah, I feel like it's been growing over the past few years from what I've seen,” she said.
Brinkley said there’s still a ways to go to make the industry more inclusive, but for now she’s just focused on the fact that she’s at her first Boot Tan Fest about to ski naked in a 40 degree blizzard.
“I mean, it's a bit more empowering than just skiing naked,” she said. “It’s something about the community, I think that's a big part of it. [It] just feels good to be here.”
At the top of the mountain, Jenny Verrochi starts a countdown as Brinkley and hundreds of other brave skiers and boarders strip down and prepare to send it.
After hooping and hollering down the mountain, Grace Currie and her friends are shivering with huge smiles as they bundle up at the bottom.
For Currie, that was the definition of “Type 2” fun.
“If you’re not familiar with that phrase, it’s objectively hard and kind of sucks when you’re doing it,” Currie said. “You know, it’s cold and you’re shaking, but then you get to the bottom and you’re like, ‘That maybe was one of the most fun things that I ever have done.’”
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