Dartmouth's Own Winter Holiday

This past weekend was one of Dartmouth’s oldest and most celebrated traditions, Winter Carnival! I had heard so many stories about the winter festivities from alums and the older girls on the team, but I still had no idea what to expect. The theme was “I came, I saw, I carnivaled,” playing off of the Latin phrase. The best tradition was the snow sculpture, which I am still amazed that the students were able to build considering that we have hardly any snow on the ground! They built the coliseum, to go along with the carnival theme. It was a big success because last year it had collapse. Opening ceremonies for Winter Carnival was at 6 pm Thursday night, where they introduced the finished snow sculpture and lit fireworks off of it!
The Colosseum Snow Sculpture

I was afraid that the fireworks would destroy the sculpture (considering one of the fireworks was scorching the snow before it went off!) but the students did a really amazing job making sure that the sculpture was strong. The opening ceremonies also had a speech from our new president Jim Kim, and a performance from Dartmouth’s a cappella group The Cords. It was so cold too, it was awesome that they all got up and sang for us. Sadly, there were supposed to be hot chocolate and cookies for after the ceremonies, but we couldn’t find them anywhere! My friends and I circled the inside of Collis Café (one of my favorite places to eat) for ten minutes, but no luck. The rest of the weekend had tons of great winter activities like the Polar Bear plunge, rock climbing, 99 cent day at the ski way, and the human dog sled race! I was too scared to do the polar bear plunge down at Occum Pond, but all my friends did it!
(photo by Joseph Mehling '69)

I was just there to take photos and help them zip up their coats after because they couldn’t feel their fingers anymore. It was so much fun because being from California, it is my first winter and it’s great to be at a school that embraces the season. But, I have to admit the best part was getting Friday off from classes, it’s awesome that Dartmouth has its own holiday to celebrate winter!

-Lexi Campbell (Solana Beach, CA), Freshman, Outside Hitter