All you need to know about Stratton Mountain, Vermont, can be summed up in two words: smooth jazz. You know the music of which I speak. It’s the programming of radio stations with call names like “K-lite” that somehow manage to keep broadcasting for years after your favorite community rock stations have been shut down. Twenty-four hours of Kenny G cover bands pelting out tunes that make one think of late-night CD infomercials with song titles that scroll over images of a turtleneck-clad, 40-something couple next to a romantic fireplace, sipping champagne on a bear-skin rug.

This is the soundtrack of Stratton. It’s pumped through speakers mounted along the main walkway of Stratton’s mountain village—which looks remarkably like Whistler, and Vail, and the multitudes of other ski-resort base areas whose master architects were attempting to duplicate a sense of European flair in their design.

This is not the Stratton I’ve heard tales of from former Vermonters who’ve traveled west over the years in search of powder, bringing with them tales of the U.S. Open of old—stories of parties, mayhem, and general debauchery that used to run rampant in the world of snowboarding, and would peak like the crescendo of a heavy metal song at this, the biggest and most hyped event of the year.

That version of the U.S. Open lives only in legend now. And those of us who missed it can only look around wistfully at the bag searches at the base of the mountain, the scatterings of people sneaking sips of well-hidden brewskis at the night rail jam, and the smaller, more subdued crowds watching the events, and try to imagine what it used to be like when the Open was the party of the year, when beer was routinely chucked on riders during their halfpipe runs, and the crowds were so thick one could barely move through them… Contests were pretty fun once upon a time, back before snowboarding got so damn serious.

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