When I originally set out to organize this cat trip, I figured it would be easy. I’ve lived in and around the Vail valley for over 10 years, and I know more than enough people to fill a 12 person snow cat for a back country ski trip. Or so I thought…

The booking of the cat and the condo was relatively painless, and I think I found pretty good deals on both of them. When I booked the cat, I had 7 or 8 people on board. I figured the last few spots would get taken up in no time. 

Of course, I wasn’t thinking about the inevitable fact that some people would have scheduling conflicts for that weekend, and others simply just couldn’t afford to come. So I had a lot of people tell me, “That sounds awesome! I’d love to go, but…”

Nevertheless, with a little over a month to go before the trip, I had every spot filled. At this point, I figured it would be easy sailing until the trip. Just keep my eye on the snow report and collect the money for the trip. That’s when the headaches started rolling in.

I got to work one morning in early February, about 3 weeks before the trip, and found 3 new emails entitled, “cat trip.” I knew that this couldn’t be good. Sure enough, each one said the same thing: “I can’t go on the trip. Sorry to bail so late in the game.” One person couldn’t get out of work, which I found hard to believe since he had put in for the day so far in advance. His friend didn’t know anyone else on the trip, so he was out too – pussy. My third friend gave me the “I can’t afford the trip” excuse. This I found preposterous, since I outlined the costs of the trip for everyone in advance. If he couldn’t afford it, he shouldn’t have taken the spot a month before. And to be quite honest, I kept the trip as affordable as possible. You’d be hard pressed to find a cheaper cat trip anywhere, so he couldn’t have thought the trip was going to be much cheaper.

The right thing to do in that situation is to offer to pay money if we can’t fill your spot or work your ass off to help find a replacement. Had I taken deposits from everyone, this wouldn’t be a problem. If you stood to lose $150, I’ll bet you’d do everything possible to find a replacement. But you live and you learn. Next year, there will be a non-refundable deposit to hold a spot on the trip, and those who flaked out this year will not get an invite unless we are completely desperate to fill a spot.

I have to give credit to the other guys on the trip. They worked their asses off to help fill those spots. Everyone put the word out consistently for 3 weeks. But the problem is, when you only have 3 weeks to save up for a $400-500 weekend, it becomes a challenge to get people on board. Rudy pulled in his friend Chris. At least we were back to 10 people. For the moment…

About 2 weeks before the trip, another friend called me and told me his boss, who had already approved his day off, wouldn’t let him get out of his shift. He manages a restaurant in Vail. They were opening a new restaurant in Boulder the day of the cat trip, and my friend was the only manager left to run the Vail restaurant. He was basically told that he wouldn’t have a job if he didn’t come to work that day. A pretty shitty thing to do to an employee who put in for a day off more than a month in advance. But I can’t exactly blame him. This is not the time to be unemployed.

So now we were back to 9 people. At this point, the trip was getting a lot more expensive, and I was beginning to worry that others would drop out b/c of the increase in price. We were teetering on the edge of a domino effect.

I have to give credit to Barney. He was the only person who had to bail that tried to be part of the solution. He felt terrible about bailing 2 weeks before the trip, and was willing to kick in money for his spot if we couldn’t fill it. A stand-up guy who understood what it means to do the right thing. Everyone else who bailed gave me the, “What do you want me to do about it?” response. Fuckers! That just pissed me off.

So the headaches began to get bigger and more frequent. I almost got to the point where I didn’t want to take this trip anymore. It just wasn’t worth the aggravation. 

I was calling everyone I knew who could keep up on this trip. But with 2 weeks notice, there just wasn’t much of a chance at filling those spots. I kept contacting the flakes who bailed and didn’t do anything to help. Those interactions were infuriating. My friend Jason would never return my calls about the trip. I know he’s busy and didn’t want to deal with it, but it just was rude to me. I didn’t appreciate it. When I finally spoke to him a week before the trip, I made him well aware of this fact. I also made it clear to him that we needed his help in filling his vacant spot. In my mind, it was the least he could do for leaving us high and dry. Fortunately, Jason is a solid guy and took the conversation to heart.

So entering the final week before the trip, we were still short 3 people. At this point, I just stopped caring. There wasn’t much more that I could do. I had exhausted all of my options for replacements, and hounding the flakes wasn’t going to be productive. They had made it abundantly clear that they didn’t care. Instead of suffering more needless headaches, I just decided to start looking forward to the trip. It would be what it would be, so no point in losing any more sleep over it.

But then an amazing thing happened. In the 2 days before the trip, we filled the final 3 spots. I couldn’t believe it. I had accepted the reality of the increased cost. I was very relieved, as was everyone else. Chris brought in one of his friends who had pretty much worked every day since New Years (he had only taken 3 days off in 2009). He had the money and was due for a couple of days off. Jason found someone to fill his spot 2 days before the trip. This guy was supposed to take a back country trip the same weekend, but it fell apart. He was chomping at the bit to latch onto another one. Finally, the day before the trip, Claudia decided to come as well.

At this point, I was getting excited for this trip. In the next post, I’ll get into the details of the trip. It definitely exceeded all of our expectations.

“The Jababa Chronicles”: All musings, anecdotes, philosophies, rants, ramblings, and tirades written exclusively by Andrew Martin unless otherwise specified.