Free Lunch

A pocket full of crumbs is a key part of the ski bum diet. Photo: Katie Lozancich
A pocket full of crumbs is a key part of the ski bum diet. Photo: Katie Lozancich
Words: Lily Krass Ritter

The snow was chalky and the pitch was steep—1,300 vertical feet of fall line skiing, straight up from the parking lot on a creaky double chair, then straight back down again. The kind of free-falling flutter that made me ignore the grumble in my stomach.

Like most days, my first meal of the morning was a Nature Valley bar. Crushed to a pulp, of course, and quite stale. It wasn’t delicious, but it was free, and offered 190 calories of sugary sustenance—enough to get me through at least three laps on Arapahoe Basin, CO’s Pallavacini lift before I had to reach for another.