SportPractice pays off as last year’s second-place team Quaffstafari slide the stein down the bar top with first-place flair – all while holding down their beer
It was all fun and drinking games until now, but the final round of the 8th Annual Gelande Quaff World Championship was imminent, and it wasn’t looking good for the home team or their fans. Interlopers from another state looked strong, almost sober, and drunkenness clashed with foreboding in the air: would the championship trophy, the Stanley Cup of competitive après-ski drinking, go to a non-Wyoming-based team for the first time in history?
A lot had transpired in the past 83 minutes in Teton Mountain Village, at the base of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. This being a ski town, the first beer was slated to fly at 4:20pm, a time that ensures that folks who caught last chair on the mountain for one final run could get to the festivities (it’s also the unofficial happy hour for marijuana smokers).
At 24F and with non-existent winds at 6,311ft above sea level, it was a picture-perfect day for a quaff. A few hundred spectators wearing expensive sunglasses and sipping cheap beer were focused on the pitch, which featured two 10ft-long melamine bar tops.
Teams battle head to head, sliding a beer down the bar to another team member who must catch it mid-air (quaffers must stand at least 24in from the end of the bar) and down it. Successfully doing so earns a single point. Catch the stein by the handle and you get two points. The team with the most points at the end of 60 seconds advances, and the other team spends the rest of the early evening drinking non-competitively.
One more rule: if a team member gets sick, the team is disqualified. “But that’s never happened, which a serious level of alcoholism,” jokes the announcer.
Down on the pitch, the matches go quickly. Hostel X win their first match. Donning Daisy Dukes and button-down plaids, the dudes from Better Late than Pregnant advance in the second match. And just short of the start of the third match, there’s the first whiff of a Colorado-legal combustible. Seconds after the scent of sinsemilla, last year’s second-place finishers, Quaffstafari, a team from Boulder, Colorado, hits the pitch.
Dressed in black sweatsuits highlighted with red, yellow and green as well as matching beanies, they have two coaches in tow. Pitted against East Infection, within seconds it’s obvious that Quaffstafari have been training: their pitches, catches and quaffs are textbook perfect.
Quaffstafari started their weekly five-hour practices in October, adding an additional weekly, five-hour practice in January. These practices took place in the Boulder backyard of team captain, Mikey Muscat, and his girlfriend and team coach, Jade Lascelles. The team worked on basics, like catching handles, as well as 360-degree spins. They also conceived all the pieces of their final round and Lascelles, a former dancer, figured out how to execute them. Quaffstafari also recorded statistics, measuring what combination of pitcher/catchers were the most effective, as well as what skills needed more attention.
Like most teams, building up alcohol tolerance is paramount. Close to the event, some teams drank as much as a case of beer per person during practice sessions. Quaffstafari consumed between 1-2 kegs of Pabst Blue Ribbon weekly during their two practices.
All of this prep showed in Quaffstafari’s final score in round one: a 30 rack and a six-pack, advancing with 36 points. In the remaining matches of round one, the team from the Mangy Moose advances with 35, as do the Storm Chasers (30), Jackson Hole Ski Patrol and the much-lauded LowPro – a team with so much local buzz that this reporter was approached at bar a few nights earlier by a festive local taking bets against them.
According to legend, in 1986, a handful of hardcore skiers, which would eventually become known as the Jackson Hole Air Force, were waiting for the mountain to open. Back then, the bartender would slide a beer down the bar to the customer who ordered it at the now-defunct Bear Claw Cafe. But on this fateful day, a beer went flying and slid off the end of the bar. Seconds before gravity was to have its wasteful way with the stein, a young man caught the beer mid-air and pounded it for good measure. Gelande quaffing was born, and became a short-lived après-ski competition that disappeared shortly thereafter, returning eight years ago with the release of a documentary dubbed, Swift. Silent. Deep.
By round two, the brightness of the afternoon has subsided, most have removed their sunglasses, and the cooling temps turn beer head into a foamy slush. On the pitch, the one rule has changed for round two: quaffers must complete a 360 before quaffing.
For the third round, quaffers now have a choice: a 360 or under-the-leg catch. The Pabst Blue Ribbon is taking its toll on some teams. For some, the look of excited anticipation has been replaced by bloated toil. A minority look fresh. Nowhere is the contrast more evident than Hostel X and Quaffstafari. The former is all heart, guts, and determination: looking the worse for wear, but still pulling handles. Conversely, Quaffstafari looks as fresh as a frosty pint of Stella Artois on a spring day.
Quaffstafari advances to the finals, setting the stage for Storm Show and LoPro. It’s another fierce match-up, with LoPro’s pinstriped-suited quaffers accruing an almost-perfect record of catching under-the-leg beers. But it’s not enough, and Storm Show advances.
There’s some grumbling among the crowd. They don’t like the way it’s looking for Storm Show. This is not about teams; this is about state pride. One 20-something woman in the second row says: “I just don’t want Colorado to win.” She’s not the only one.
The announcer shares the rules of the finals: the round is twice as long at 120 seconds, and before a team can start earning points they have to complete three successful quaffs: a handle catch, 360 catch and under-the-leg catch. After that, one point is awarded for a handle catch, two for a 360 handle catch or under the leg, and, this is where it gets really interesting – parkour meets PBR, if you will – up to five points for a “freestyle catch”, which are awarded at the judges’ discretion.
Storm Show also has the hometown support of the majority of the crowd. People who live in Jackson, the only incorporated town in the valley of Jackson Hole, take immense pride in their home that includes a healthy après culture, where locals mingle with tourists and drinks are uniformly inexpensive. Although ski bum culture is on life support, if not dead, it’s a way of life here. Locals even have their own term for these hedonistic dirtbags in duct-taped Gore-Tex: “skids” – Peter Pans who never grow up, work entry-level jobs well into adulthood, and sometimes live in their trucks.
During the setup for finals, Quaffstafari roll out tiki torches, a rasta-painted ski, as well as a funnel-looking device and a log round, piquing the interest of the crowd just for the sheer number of props. Storm Show doesn’t have a fraction of the practices under their belt as Quaffstafari, but they do share one thing in common: a practice quaffing table that about 2ft longer than today’s championship tables, which translates to more speed and might help stein break through the suds moguls of frozen beer that accrue during the round. “You want the beers coming off the table pretty hot,” explained Pope.
And the final round? Just might be the coolest two minutes in sport.
Storm Show runs through a slew of tricks including the Bromance (two team-mates with interlocking arms, catch two beers, and chug them), the bukkake (the catcher’s arm pokes out of his pants’ zipper, catches the beer and pours the PBR into his team-mate’s mouth), and the fountain (three individual beers are slid down the bar and caught. Instead of swallowing, the quaffers “baby bird” the beer back into a pitcher and slide it back down to the pitcher, who drinks it). And what just might have been a nod to Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival, Storm Show sets the table on fire and continues to competition quaff.
During the course of their two minutes, Quaffstafari’s tricks include juggling canned PBRs, using a ski to extend the bar top and successfully quaffing a mug, one member hanging upside-down on pole held by two other team members and funneling a beer, taking a hit from a hops-and-water-filled bong, draining said bong, and exhaling the hit (in that order), and quaffing a beer with a goldfish.
From a spectacle point of view they’re both great, but Quaffstafari is next level: the Cirque de Soleil of gelande quaff.
When the scores are announced, almost everyone is surprised: 70-70. It’s a tie.
One judge is overheard saying, “What Quaffstafari didn’t do is drink beer. While Quaffstafari were performing their escapades, Storm Show was crushing beers.”
A tie results in a quaff-off: one mug, one pitcher and one quaffer – the first team to successfully down their beer wins. But for this, it’s back to first-round rules: 60 seconds with one point for a glass catch and two points for a handle.
Both teams are on fire, pouring themselves into this final match, nabbing handle after handle – and it’s too close to call. The judges, all former quaffing champions, confer and the results are delivered to the announcer. Both teams have scored more points than any other round and Quaffstafari ekes out the win by two, 42 to 40.
Judge John Recchio, says “it’s all about practice, and Quaffstafari practiced. Now they’ve got the cup.”
John Verdon, fellow judge,and owner of the post-quaff party host (the Village Cafe, who was once called “Jackson’s quintessential ski bum” by Power magazine), adds: “That quaff-off was the best. It showed the pureness of the sport of gelande quaff. The circus act is gone. It peels the onion all the way back to the where it should be: throw the beer, catch the beer, drink the beer.”
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