Breckenridge
January has arrived once again, the snow is deep and the townsfolk in this ski and snowboard mecca are primed for Friday’s start of the annual blowout known as Ullr Fest.
The celebration is a wild, alcohol fueled tribute to Ullr, the Norse god of snow, and also, in no small way, a tribute to the durability of the human liver.
Ullr Fest began in the mountain town in 1962. No one seems to know why. It roared along until the 1970s, when it was suspended due to concerns of public safety officials about villagers and tourists drinking themselves into blindness.
That phase passed, however, and the town revived Ullr Fest as an annual celebration in 1981.
Its history is the stuff of legend, including the young man who staggered into the Ullr Fest bonfire in 1985, caught his trousers on fire and then dove into the nearby Blue River to extinguish the flames. Which would have been a great idea in June. But it was January, the Blue River was frozen solid and the man ended up with still smoldering pants and a big lump on his head from hitting the ice. Friends rolled him in snow to put out the trouser fire, and the party went on.
A year earlier, another guy with a head full of beer passed out in the parking lot near the bonfire. When his brain’s neurons began firing again after midnight, the temperature had plunged to 15 degrees below zero, and he realized his face was frozen to the parking lot. After being alerted to the screams, the Fire Department arrived and freed the man’s head with a combination of warm water and a chisel.
Greg Abernathy has seen it all.
“The bonfire in the middle of town was the damnedest thing you’ve ever seen,” Abernathy said. “It would get 50 and 75 feet in diameter. People would throw their Christmas trees into it. And that kid who froze his face to the parking lot, well, you never forget a thing like that. They had to chip him out.”
Abernathy came from Texas to ski Breckenridge in the early ’60s and never left. He and his wife, Kim, who own Lone Star Sports, were king and queen of the Ullr Fest parade once. He said he’d been drinking quite a bit and somehow got himself wedged in the sunroof of the royal limousine. Exactly what year they were king and queen is a bit, well, foggy.
“It might have been ’96,” he said. “Although, that might be wrong. I don’t know.”
From Mrs. Abernathy: “Maybe it was ’96. Something like that. I don’t remember. I just remember him getting stuck in the sunroof.”
Greg Abernathy, it should be noted, served on the Breckenridge Town Council from 1994 to 1998.
“One year, the council voted to enforce the open-liquor container law during Ullr Fest,” he recalled. “I was the lone ‘no’ vote. My argument was simple. We have two symphony orchestras in this town. I feel strongly that any place with two symphony orchestras should also have two public drinking days.”
The town Police Department agrees, more or less.
“Ullr Fest has a strong tradition in Breckenridge,” said Police Chief Rick Holman, who took that job five years ago. “It’s what the community wants. Us starting a riot by trying to arrest everyone who has an open container of liquor, well, nobody wants that during Ullr.”
The festivities officially kick off Friday with the Bar Series, in which the town’s taverns offer customers prizes and other incentives to stop in for a drink. The real stuff begins Monday with the Ullr bonfire, which is now held at the Nordic Center on the Breckenridge Golf Course. The bonfire offers free beer, according to the chamber of commerce, “while it lasts.”
There’s a skating party Tuesday night and the Ullympics on Wednesday night (the frying pan toss is popular) with “beer giveaways.” Then, on Thursday night, the main event: the Ullr parade.
Sitting atop one of the floats as he has for many years will be a guy dressed a doctor, flinging handfuls of condoms into the crowd.
“What makes that funny,” Abernathy said, “is that he IS a doctor. He’s my doctor.”
For the record, the doctor’s name is Craig Perrinjaquet. If you plan on checking out Ullr Fest you might want to remember his name.
Just in case your pants catch on fire.
Staff writer Rich Tosches writes each Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at rtosches@denverpost.com.
