- Jack O'Brien
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- powder.com
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- December 23, 2025
This story originally appeared in the print magazine POWDER 2026 Photo Annual. Copies are still available while supplies last. Click here to get yours.
Hammerschlagen
Just as the snowbound roof above drips ever faster from the rising heat of the day, the din of the bar ascends in a slow but sure fashion as the hours roll on, overtaking the reggae that blares from the old speakers now struggling to be heard. My friend and I are sitting in a grimy pub at the base, one of the last of its kind in town, and we sure as hell are happy to be here.
We were essentially alone during our long lunch. Now, the room now fills shoulder-to-shoulder as the afternoon oozes by, beers and whiskey-gingers flowing as the spring sun infuses the space with a warmth you could almost hold in your hands. It fills the divey old double-wide with a welcome sultryness, unavoidably affecting all. Outside, the snow also takes on the star’s flux, slowly turning to water. Spring is here. Renewal.
We’ve been dutifully manning our post at the bar for hours now, our first-thing morning laps long since a memory. This is a rarity, a ski and bar day on a Monday. But avalanche considerations and type-A team dynamics in our AirBNB a few ranges from home brought our long weekend boys trip to an early end. So we drove back and were granted the silver lining of a free day. And we take to it the only way we know how. With a ski and a beer.
A woman waiting her turn to order a pitcher smiles at me from across the bar, her previously helmeted hair messy, her cheeks and chin sunkissed by a hundred days of skiing. I sheepishly return the smile and immediately look down after locking eyes for just a moment. I’ve never known how to handle this sort of thing. Still, the acknowledgement is always exciting. And my wife–my absolute and only rock–is never far from my mind.
Without fail we have one too many. And as fate would have it a friend who will undoubtedly help us have more bursts in the door. In tow is a cadre we have never met but immediately feel connected to. And one of them is celebrating her 40th birthday. A round of car bombs materializes, then another. Soon I’m buying a half dozen and distributing them to my new friends, most of whom I’ll never see again. We then move on to the games, one involving a hammer. Happy and a little bleary-eyed we smash away.
In so many ways it feels like just another day–I had spent many like this in my younger resort-bound and après-prioritized youth. But this is in fact an apparition–a momentary flashback to the time before the desk job, prior to my current more adult inclination toward ski touring, when all that mattered was the moment.
Things aren’t quite so simple anymore–and for the better. My wife joins us in the back room of the bar, seven months pregnant, where we’ve been laughing through Hammerschlagen for hours now. Our new friend whose 40th birthday it is greets her, and in our inebriated state she tells my wife “oh, my husband is the fun one, too,” which itself is funny because my wife is indeed the fun one, she’s simply preoccupied with our future. And I’m just having a moment.
But this moment with friends new and old comes and goes; just as a smiling glance from across the bar dances in the ether for just an instant, like the memory of an entire youth flashes in your mind’s eye, all ephemeral.
Soon it’s time to go. Hell, we have to work tomorrow. I shoulder my skis and smile and we walk to the car as the sun slides behind the Western mountains. Two months later I would be a dad; three years on, my chin hairs have mostly turned to grey. And months after that my second child would be born. The time before would come to feel fleeting, like the snow on our roofs, like the color of our hair. And especially like the good fortune of a lucky little Monday.
This story originally appeared in the print magazine POWDER 2026 Photo Annual. Copies are still available while supplies last. Click here to get yours.
