The values of participation in varsity athletics are many and diverse. Football supposedly "builds character" by subjecting its communicants to the rigor and toughness of a highly competitive kind of activity. Crew fosters team-work. Baseball teaches alertness. Fencing develops poise....But one thing that often gets lost in the shuffle is the old-fashioned idea of recreation.

At Harvard one of the few organized sports that still obviously caters to this most neglected of the athletic values is skiing. And last weekend the University's snow-set proved once again (if more proof was needed) that they know how to have more plain fun than almost any other group of sportsmen going.

The occasion was the annual Harvard-Dartmouth slalom race, held in Tuckerman's Ravine. This is the traditional windup meet for the Crimson skiers, and the way it is run is unusual in several respects.

Family Atmosphere

In the first place, the teams are made up not only of undergraduates but of alumni as well. The 1958 Harvard contingent, for example, included representatives of 16 different college classes--one of whom, Al Sise, graduated a full thirty years ago this June.

As a result, the affair has a definite family atmosphere about it. A sizeable audience is usually recruited from among the participants' wives and girl friends, and children and parents.

One undergraduate member of the Harvard squad described last Saturday's proceedings as follows...

"We all trudged up into the ravine together in the morning. The race was supposed to begin at noon, but the Dartmouth Outing Club--hosts for the meet--had forgotten the flags; so some of their guys had to go back down to the Notch.

"A Few Drinks"

"Meanwhile, the rest of us were skiing around up in the ravine and generally having fun. Some of the people had brought up beer and wine, so we took a few drinks from time to time.

"The race finally started at three or so. The Outing Club had forgotten the stop watches, so we had to use regular ones. Sad to say, Dartmouth beat us, although they were pretty drunk.

"A guy named Pete Caldwell (Dartmouth '54) won the individual title; and they also got second and third. Al Arkley was the first Harvard finisher--he came in fourth. Fred Fisher '50 and Spike Holden '60 got sixth and seventh.

"Then we all went down to the Harvard ski cabin and had a big party which lasted all night long. We had half a keg of beer to drink up. We awarded the trophies then, too. We have three trophies--the outhouse trophy, the garbage trophy, and the real good trophy. The first two are roadsigns--one stays in our garbage dump and one over our outhouse. The third is a nice silver cup....But the Outing Club forgot to bring it."