Fred Pabst was a ski bum

My dog likes cold beer, beer snow cones, pretty much beer anything. No, I’m not the weird guy that gets my dog wasted. She just likes a couple sips when hanging with boys, and who could resist a PBR longneck that sat in the snowbank all night, and erupted into a fountain of slow-moving beer slurpy?

Pabst Blue Ribbon, better known in suds-savoring circles as PBR, is the flagship beer in many mountain roosts (and doghouses), to an almost cliché level. Why? Mostly because it’s cheap; cans pack into the backcountry well (especially if prewrapped in a coozie); and PBR is readily available in most every liquor store or local’s fridge. But it wasn’t until I made some south-facing slush turns at Bromley Ski Area in Manchester, Vermont that I learned the pioneering side of Pabst.

Milwaukee brewer Frederick Pabst founded the beer—Pabst Blue Ribbon. His grandson, also Fred Pabst, was the snow pioneer, an old-school ski bum that started making turns in the early 1900’s, and, after leaving the family brew business, founded a string of ski areas from the Midwest to the Northeast. Including southern Vermont’s Bromley in the mid-30’s, which was picked by Pabst for its south-facing terrain and proximity to a relatively populated area.

I stopped by a couple springs ago while working on a story about Vermont’s Route 100 Corridor—sort of the eastern skier’s superhighway. We hit Bromley around 1 p.m. for a few runs, and the corn was ripe as apples in October. We forgot sunscreen, but remembered the beer. Bromley is, after all, a beer-drinkers mountain, prime for carving down silky, fall-line groomers on a 40-degree day, T-Tops off the hot rod, sunglasses on, and wind blowing through your hair.

Picture that the next time you pop open a PBR. Just keep an eye on your beer, or Kaya might sneak up behind you and score.